Peak Water Civilization and the World’s Water Crisis
Alexander Bell
Luath Press 2009
Hardback 208 pp
If oil supply peaks and begins to decline times will be hard.
Standard of living will decline and people may go hungry but they will
be able to adapt by powering down and making do with less.
If water supply- for domestic use but also for irrigation- peaks and declines people have no option but to migrate.
UK journalist Alexander Bell spells out his thesis starkly in this
fascinating and clearly written book: many of the world’s major regions
are past or on the brink of peak water and face growing populations
with declining supplies.
The rich world will not escape the catastrophic effects of this as
they depend on vast quantities of “virtual water” imported for the most
part from the global South in the form of food and goods. They will
also have to deal with increasing numbers of water refugees in the
future.
Bell begins by tracing the link between water control and the development of civilization.
Civilization is a model of living that suits itself to societies that control water
Six thousand years ago in Mesopotamia the Sumerians became the first
to experiment in large scale water control by keeping back the floods
of the Tigris and the Euphrates, allowing both productive agriculture
on the fertile flood plain and a store of water for irrigation in the
dry periods.
Ever since then water control has been both a prerequisite growth of
cities and a symbol of the power that water can bestow on emperors and
rulers. The spectacular viaducts of the Romans were more for bathing
and recreation than irrigation, providing a potent symbol. The hubris
of the doomed city of Las Vegas with its fountains in the desert
provides a contemporary example.
Bell make the interesting point about the other way in which control
of water has become the mark of a civilized society in the use of
sewers and flush toilets. Our modern use of clean drinking water to
flush away our bodily wastes may be the ultimate symbol of an
unsustainable culture.
The control of water however takes enormous effort as the canals
need to be constantly dug out to remove the silt, and this need for
labor has formed part of the cycle of water supply, irrigation, and
increased population:
An important thing happens when humans stop moving from
place to place in search of water, food and safety. They have more
children.
The other difficulty with constant irrigation is the build up of
salt. Irrigation in hot countries leads to considerable losses in
evaporation, leaving the mineral salts brought down from the mountains
behind on the land. In many of the world’s major agricultural regions,
as water supplies dry up the land becomes useless.
For millions, water supply in the future is threatened by climate
change which is melting the glaciers which have provided steady
supplies for millenia, causing first floods and later, permanent water
shortages.
In the modern era, governments and presidents have used the mega-dam as a show of strength and independence.
One example is the High Aswan Dam built by Nassar in the newly
independent country. This too has been victim to evaporation, but
political reasons have made it impossible to make a better arrangement
of building dams in the cooler mountains of Ethiopia. Thus Egypt is
arming itself against the thirst of its poorer neighbors with growing
populations and less ability to sustain themselves as the deserts
spread and the planet warms up.
Many other areas are facing potential water conflicts: Israel and
Palestine; Pakistan and India. Bell explains that historically the
struggle for control of water has not usually lead to war because
people feel they have to co-operate at least to some degree over water
rights, but comments grimly
The idea of a water war has become commonplace. It may
happen like the scenarios above, but I suspect the world has to face up
to a more horrific future. Not one of war as we understand it in 20th
century terms, but a state of ongoing global trauma as people witness
civilization decay when the water runs out. How we respond to that
catastrophe will be the mark of the human race. Almost certainly it
will mean the end of civilization as we currently know it.
Peak Water is a valuable contribution to our understanding
of human ecology providing a broad sweep of the human predicament of
overshoot: our thirst for control of water has been historically the
core issue for civilization, but as we have extended our temporary
control over nature we have increasingly taken it for granted as just
the stuff that comes out of our taps. Perhaps even the environmental
movement, with its recent preoccupation over peak oil and climate
change, have also been lulled into a false sense of security over this
vital resource, forgetting that no degree of adaptation can adjust to
water shortages.
Alexander Bell has written a great book to remind us that we are
soon going to find out just how long a society can survive without
enough water.