OUR WATER, LAND & SEAS
Our Water
We can no longer take water for granted. Our 'water footprint' consists not just of the water we actually use every day, but also of the 'virtual water' we consume in our food and household goods. It takes 24,000 litres of water to produce a kilo of beef and 30,000 litres of water to make a mobile phone. Only 3% of the water on the planet is fresh, and an even smaller percentage is available for our use. Of this over 70% is used for irrigation, but this has involved the damming of rivers and the unsustainable depletion of groundwater: 1 billion people eat food from the unsustainable extraction of water from ancient aquifers. Boreholes are drilled deeper and deeper into mineral bearing rock. Some of this water is now 'salinated' and is poisoning the land it waters and those who depend on it for drinking. Our projected need for clean water is ever greater...
Pollutants contaminating our water supply
Where rivers once ran
Mountain snow and ice caps store winter rainfall and regulate river flow year round. These have been severely depleted and continue to melt providing good summer flows now. When they are gone we will have floods in winter and drought in the summer. The diversion of rivers by dams for irrigation and industry now produces 20% of the world's electricity. Their creation has however created huge damage from the displacement of eighty million people from their land to the destruction of the Aral Sea - what water is left of it is too polluted to sustain any fish. Many great rivers like the Colorado no longer reach the sea. Some of those that do, like the Mississippi, are so full of toxins from industry and fertiliser runoff that they create oxygen-dead zones where no fish or sea life can survive.
Deforestation has led to floods and droughts. In deforested areas the soil is too warm and can no longer absorb the rain. Global warming means greater evaporation, which in turn leads to increased rainfall and further disruption of traditional weather patterns. Pressure on water resources is likely to lead to increased political tension and result in water wars. This is especially so when different countries share the same river systems like those of the Nile and the Jordan. The 1967 Arab-Israeli war was one of the first wars over access to water. After the Green Revolution in plant science we now need a Blue Revolution for our water and its management.
Our Land
The available land on which to farm and grow food is shrinking. The Lebanon was once the breadbasket of the Roman Empire and the Sahara desert was once a fertile farming area. Soil is created by vegetation rotting over thousands of years but can be washed away in a few decades. The ruins of ancient cities are normally buried under soil that has built up over thousands of years. Where these structures are in heavily grazed rural areas, though, soil erosion keeps them exposed. Soil salinisation and rising sea levels will also reduce the viability and availability of farmland.
Indonesian deforestation for palm oil
Land erosion and flooding in Pakistan
The quality of soil and its balance of bacteria and minerals are critical to plant and therefore to human health. Soil production capacity drives the animal and human feed chain and ultimately our survival. Soil erosion, driven partly by crop growing, overgrazing and deforestation, has been widespread in the last 100 years. This also leads to visible effects from muddy rivers to devastating landslides and dust storms. The area available for long-term agriculture is shrinking through erosion, over fertilization and salination (Irrigating using mineral heavy deep groundwater). Our soil quality and therefore production capacity is decreasing worldwide.
Climate change is expected to reduce grain yields by 340 million tons a year by 2025 - the equivalent of the current US harvest. Food shortages may be further exacerbated by using land for bio-fuels and other industrial crops. Rising sea levels and floods also remove land from production as well as destroying existing crops. Some countries like Saudi Arabia and China are already buying up land in other countries to bolster their future food security.
Our Seas
Increased demand and the sheer efficiency of industrial fishing techniques have led to the collapse of some fisheries like that of the grand banks and its once teeming cod population. Many species such as tuna remain under threat. Fishing on the Sea of Galilee has been banned, as there are almost no fish left. Over 300 oxygen free 'dead zones' caused by pollution from river estuaries have reduced the area of sea available for fishing.
Bluefin tuna on the verge of extinction
Bycatch as a result of bottom trawling
The effect of industrial fishing on cod and tuna has been especially severe. A simple look at any fishmonger's slab or supermarket shelf - full of 'Baby Hake Fillets',' Sole Petite' and other immature fish tells a sorry tale. The only full size fish are farmed ones fed on even smaller fish caught at sea. We have already eaten their parents.
Marine based protein - or fishmeal is a key feed ingredient for many industrially farmed animals. Over half of all marine caught fish are used for industrial purposes. The increasing scarcity of fish and the massive rise in the price of fishmeal has led to the creation of krill harvesting nets to obtain the last cheap protein with which to keep the animal cities fed. This devastating development will have material knock-on effects on the whole marine food chain and our seas.
Fish farming currently uses between 2kg and 6kg of marine caught fishmeal to produce 1kg of farmed fish of which we eat 23% (the fillets!).
The Protein Crunch:
Civilisation on the Brink
JASON DREW with David Lorimer
