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SESSION 7

The Wave of the Future

Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world,

and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies,

refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

Paul Hawken, Class of 2009 Commencement Address, University of Portland, May 2009

Palouse Falls by WHWise

SESSION GOALS

To share insights from the course and personal commitments to be better stewards of water.

To envision and discuss potential positive changes for water in the future. To discuss where we might apply our energies on water issues, individually

or as a group.

REFLECTION QUESTION

Do we have a collective responsibility

to future generations to respond to water issues on community, regional, and global levels?

If so, how might envisioning the future focus our efforts?

Reminder to Facilitator: The Reflection Question moves quickly. Each participant gives a brief

answer without questions or comments from others. .

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SESSION INTRODUCTION In this final session we will consider the future prospects for water, and how we can contribute to making them positive and life-sustaining. The readings offer several provocative visions for the future. In the first, Sandra Postel covers the impact of our water management practices on our ecological environment, then moves to examples of the current shift to practices that harmonize with the environment. Postel ends with the challenge that “the water crisis requires us to pay attention to how we value and use water.” Following up on the collective action theme is the “Vision 2040” piece, which presents a comprehensive strategy for working toward an optimistic water future for the Puget Sound region. This many-faceted blueprint, based on community input, highlights once again the interconnectedness of healthy waterways with all the ecological and human elements that contribute to a healthy environment. “Facing down the Water Crisis” opens the viewing lens to the world stage and provides glimpses into the water crisis that prevails in many parts of the world. Problems over inaccessibility to water, inadequacy of supply, and degraded water quality are provoking serious levels of conflict elsewhere that have yet to occur in our country. Worldwide, there’s an urgent need for “a revolution in thinking about water,” the author argues. While this notion may evoke feelings of overwhelm, it also prompts the question of what will happen if humans do not fundamentally re-evaluate water planning, policy, and management—and share the knowledge gained in the process. So what can a single individual do? The parable, “Flight of the Hummingbird,” invites us to reflect upon our own attitudes about being an active part of the solutions or a passive observer. How will the ideas and information gained from this course affect your stewardship of water? How can you contribute some small part of your energy to the future fate of water? Water: Will There Be Enough? By Sandra Postel, YES Magazine, Summer 2010 This article is an adaptation of a longer essay from The Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st Century’s Sustainability Crises, Fall 2010 from Watershed Media.

For at least three decades, Americans have had some inkling that we face an uncertain energy future, but we’ve ignored a much more worrisome crisis—water. Cheap and seemingly abundant, water is so common that it’s hard to believe we could ever run out. Ever since the Apollo astronauts photographed Earth from space, we’ve had the image of our home as a strikingly blue planet, a place of great water wealth. But of all the water on Earth, only about 2.5 percent is freshwater—and two-thirds of that is locked up in glaciers and ice caps. Less than one hundredth of one percent of Earth’s water is fresh and renewed each year by the solar-powered hydrologic cycle. Across the United States and around the world, we’re already reaching or overshooting the limits of that cycle. The Colorado and Rio Grande Rivers are now so overtapped that they discharge

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little or no water to the sea for months at a time. In the West, we’re growing food and supplying water to our communities by overpumping groundwater. This creates a bubble in the food economy far more serious than the recent housing, credit, or dot-com bubbles: We are meeting some of today’s food needs with tomorrow’s water. The massive Ogallala Aquifer, which spans parts of eight states from southern South Dakota to northwest Texas, and provides 30 percent of the groundwater used for irrigation in the country, is steadily being depleted. As of 2005, a volume equivalent to two-thirds of the water in Lake Erie had been pumped out of this water reserve. Most farmers will stop irrigating when the wells run dry or the water drops so far down that it’s too expensive to pump. At the same time, climate change is rewriting the rules about how much water we’ll have available and when. Climate scientists warn of more extreme droughts and floods, and of changing precipitation patterns that will make weather, storms, and natural disasters more severe and less predictable. The historical data and statistical tools used to plan billions of dollars worth of annual global investments in dams, flood control structures, diversion projects, and other big pieces of water infrastructure are no longer reliable. While farmers in the Midwest were recovering from the spring flood of 2008 (in some areas the second “100-year flood” in 15 years), farmers in California and Texas fallowed cropland and sent cattle prematurely to slaughter to cope with the drought of 2009. In the Southeast, after 20 months of dryness, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue stood outside the State Capitol in November 2007 and led a prayer for rain, beseeching the heavens to turn a spigot on for his parched state. Two years later, Perdue was pleading instead for federal aid after intense rain storms near Atlanta caused massive flooding that claimed eight lives. Although none of these disasters can be pinned directly on global warming, they are the kinds of events climate scientists warn will occur more often as the planet heats up. It’s through water that we’ll feel the strains of climate change—when we can no longer count on familiar patterns of rain, snow, and river flow to irrigate our farms, power our dams, and fill our city reservoirs. In answer to the climate crisis, the economy will need to move away from fossil fuels toward solar, wind, and other non-carbon energy sources. But there is no transitioning away from water. Water has no substitutes. And unlike oil and coal, water is much more than a commodity: It is the basis of life. A human being can only live for five to seven days without water. Deprive any plant or animal of water, and it dies. Our decisions about water—how to use, allocate, and manage it—are deeply ethical ones; they determine the survival of most of the planet’s species, including our own. Shifting Course For most of modern history, water management has focused on bringing water under human control and transferring it to expanding cities, industries, and farms. Since 1950, the number of large dams worldwide has climbed from 5,000 to more than 45,000—an average construction rate of two large dams per day for half a century. Globally, 364 large water-transfer projects move 105 trillion gallons of water annually from one river basin to another—equivalent to transferring the annual flow of 22 Colorado Rivers. Millions of wells punched into the Earth tap

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underground aquifers, using diesel or electric pumps to lift vast quantities of groundwater to the surface. Big water schemes have allowed oasis cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas to thrive in the desert, world food production to expand along with population, and living standards for hundreds of millions to rise. But globally they have also worsened social inequities, as poor people are dislocated from their homes to make way for dams and canals, and as downstream communities lose the flows that sustained their livelihoods. Such approaches also ignore water’s limits and the value of healthy ecosystems. Today, many rivers flow like plumbing works, turned on and off like water from a faucet. Fish, mussels, river birds, and other aquatic life no longer get the flows and habitats they need to survive: 40 percent of all fish species in North America are at risk of extinction. As we face the pressures of climate change and growing water demands, many leaders and localities are calling for even bigger versions of the strategies of the past. By some estimates the volume of water moved through river transfer schemes could more than double globally by 2020. But mega-projects are risky in a warming world where rainfall and river flow patterns are changing in uncertain ways.

“We call upon the waters that rim the earth horizon to horizon

that flow in our rivers and streams, that fall upon our gardens and fields, and we ask that they teach us and show us the way.”

Chinook Indian Blessing

Such big projects also require giant quantities of increasingly expensive energy. Pumping, moving, treating, and distributing water takes energy at every stage. Transferring Colorado River water into southern California, for example, requires about 1.6 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per cubic meter (about 264 gallons) of water; the same quantity of water sent hundreds of kilometers from north to south through California’s State Water Project takes about 2.4 kWh. As a result, the energy required to provide drinking water to a typical southern California home can rank third behind that required to run the air conditioner and refrigerator. Planners and policy-makers are eyeing desalination as a silver-bullet solution to water shortages. But they miss—or dismiss—the perverse irony: By burning more fossil fuels and by making local water supplies more and more dependent on increasingly expensive energy, desalination creates more problems than it solves. Producing one cubic meter of drinkable water from salt water requires about 2 kWh of electricity. Water for People and Nature As the limitations of big-infrastructure strategies have become more apparent, a vanguard of citizens, communities, farmers, and corporations are thinking about water in a new way. They’re asking, what do we really need the water for, and can we meet that need with less? The upshot of this shift in thinking is a new movement in water management that is much more about ideas, ingenuity, and ecological intelligence than it is about big pumps, pipelines, dams, and canals.

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These solutions tend to work with nature, rather than against it. In this way, they make effective use of “ecosystem services”—the benefits provided by healthy watersheds and wetlands. And through better technologies and more informed choices, they seek to raise water productivity—to make every drop count. Communities are finding, for example, that protecting watersheds is the best way to make sure water supplies are clean and reliable. A healthy watershed can do the work of a water treatment plant—filtering out pollutants, and at a lower cost to boot. New York City, for instance, is investing some $1.5 billion to restore and protect the Catskill-Delaware Watershed (which supplies 90 percent of its drinking water) in lieu of constructing a $6 billion filtration plant that would cost an additional $300 million a year to operate. A number of other cities across the United States—from tiny Auburn, Maine, to Seattle—have saved hundreds of millions of dollars in avoided capital and operating costs by opting for watershed protection over filtration plants. Communities facing increased flood damage are achieving cost-effective flood protection by restoring rivers. After enduring 19 flood episodes between 1961 and 1997, Napa, Calif., opted for this approach over the conventional route of channelizing and building levees. In partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the $366 million project is reconnecting the Napa River with its historic floodplain, moving homes and businesses out of harm’s way, revitalizing wetlands and marshlands, and constructing levees and bypass channels in strategic locations. In addition to increased flood protection and reduced flood insurance rates, Napa residents will benefit from parks and trails for recreation, higher tourism revenues, and improved habitat for fish and wildlife. Similarly, communities facing increased damage from heavy stormwater runoff can turn roofs, streets, and parking lots into water catchments. Portland, Ore., is investing in “green roofs” and “green streets” to prevent sewer overflows into the Willamette River. Chicago now boasts more than 200 green roofs—including atop City Hall—that collectively cover 2.5 million square feet, more than any other U.S. city. The vegetated roofs are providing space for urban gardens and helping to catch stormwater and cool the urban environment. Many communities are revitalizing their rivers by tearing down dams that are no longer safe or serving a justifiable purpose. Over the last decade more than 500 dams have been removed from U.S. rivers, opening up habitat for fisheries, restoring healthier water flows, improving water quality, and returning aquatic life to rivers. In the 10 years since the Edwards Dam was removed from the Kennebec River near Augusta, Maine, populations of alewives and striped bass have returned in astounding numbers, reviving a recreational fishery that adds $65 million annually to the local economy. Conservation remains the least expensive and most environmentally sound way of balancing water budgets. Many cities and towns have reduced their water use through relatively simple measures like repairing leaks in distribution systems, retrofitting homes and businesses with water-efficient fixtures and appliances, and promoting more sensible and efficient outdoor water use. Motivated by a cap on groundwater pumping from the Edwards Aquifer in south-central Texas, San Antonio has cut its per capita water use by more than 40 percent, to one of the lowest levels of any Western U.S. city. Even more impressive, a highly successful conservation

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program started in 1987 in Boston cut total water demand 43 percent by 2009, bringing water use to a 50-year low and eliminating the need for a costly diversion project from the Connecticut River. But the potential for conservation has barely been tapped. It is especially crucial in agriculture. Irrigation accounts for 70 percent of water use worldwide and even more in the western U.S., so getting more crop per drop is central to meeting future food needs sustainably. In California, more famers are turning to drip irrigation, which delivers water at low volumes directly to the roots of crops. Between 2003 and 2008, California’s drip and micro-sprinkler area expanded by 630,000 acres, bringing its total to more than 2.3 million acres—62 percent of the nation’s total area under drip irrigation. As individuals, we’ll also need to make more conscious choices about what and how much we consume. Some products and foods—especially meat—have a high water cost. It can take five times more water to supply 10 grams of protein from beef than from rice. So eating less meat can lighten our dietary water footprint (while also improving our health). If all U.S. residents reduced their consumption of animal products by half, the nation’s total dietary water requirement in 2025 would drop by 261 billion cubic meters per year, a savings equal to the annual flow of 14 Colorado Rivers. We’ll need to change how we use water in and around our homes and neighborhoods. Turf grass covers some 40.5 million acres in the United States—an area three times larger than any irrigated farm crop in the country. Particularly in the western United States, where outdoor watering typically accounts for 50 percent or more of household water use, converting thirsty green lawns into native drought-tolerant landscaping can save a great deal of water. Las Vegas now pays residents up to $1.50 for each square foot of grass they rip out, which has helped shrink the city’s turf area by 125 million square feet and lower its annual water use by 7 billion gallons. Albuquerque, New Mexico, has reduced its total water use by 21 percent since 1995, largely through education and rebates to encourage water-thrifty landscapes. Energy and water are tightly entwined, and all too often public policies to “solve” one problem simply make the other one worse. For example, the 2007 congressional mandate to produce 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol a year by 2015 would require an estimated 1.6 trillion gallons of additional irrigation water annually (and even more direct rainfall)—a volume exceeding the annual water withdrawals of the entire state of Iowa. Even solar power creates a demand for water, especially some of the big solar-thermal power plants slated for the sunny Southwest. It’s still possible to have a future in which all basic food and water needs are met, healthy ecosystems are sustained, and communities remain secure and resilient, even in the face of climate disruptions. Just as the economic crash is forcing Americans to reassess what they value financially, the water crisis requires us to pay attention to how we value and use water. Across the country, communities will need to learn to take care of the ecosystems that supply and cleanse water, to live within their water means, and to share water equitably. Sandra Postel adapted this article for Water Solutions, the Summer 2010 issue of YES! Magazine. Sandra is director of the Global Water Policy Project, a fellow of the Post Carbon Institute and the first freshwater fellow of the National Geographic Society. She is the author of numerous books and articles, including the award-winning Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity, which became the basis of a PBS documentary.

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Vision 2040: Restore And Sustain The Environment This article appeared on the Puget Sound Regional website, psrc.org, in 2009. The Puget Sound Regional Council adopted VISION 2040 in April 2008. VISION 2040 is the result of a process undertaken by the region’s elected officials, public agencies, interest groups, and individuals to develop a regional strategy to accommodate the additional 1.7 million people and 1.2 million new jobs expected to be in the region by the year 2040. This vision for the future lays out a strategy for maintaining a healthy region -- one that promotes the well being of people and communities, economic vitality, and a healthy environment. There is a growing understanding of the role the environment plays in personal well-being, water quality, economic prosperity, food production, recreational opportunities, visual and aesthetic features, sense of place, and overall quality of life. We better understand the region’s ecology, how natural systems function, and how human actions impact the environment. Environmental protection and restoration efforts -- such as the listing of salmon species on the federal Endangered Species List – have also increased. There are dozens of efforts underway to improve the environment. This is the work of resource management agencies, local governments, tribal governments, research institutions, health agencies, and advocacy groups, as well as other nongovernmental organizations. These efforts have vastly increased our knowledge of the varied functions and systems that make up our environment. A unifying vision of the ways those efforts interconnect at the regional level would be a valuable contribution to environmental management activities. A sustainable approach to accommodating growth is possible, given the region's recent successes in redirecting growth away from rural and natural resource lands into the designated urban growth area and centers, revitalizing older cities and neighborhoods, and protecting and restoring natural systems. Building and development practices can be carried out in a manner that minimizes impacts to the environment or even improves the environment where damage has

previously occurred. Increases in the region's population and employment do not have to result in deterioration of the environment. There are examples all around the globe of urban regions that have adapted as they have grown, using innovative and environmentally sustainable development practices, and changing their approach to accommodating growth. These regions – which include the central

Treat yourself to a walk this week! Go to your favorite place in nature. What feelings, images or thoughts are evoked? (If you cannot go out, imagine this walk to your special spot within your mind’s eye.)

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Puget Sound -- have cleaned changing their approach to accommodating growth. These regions – which include the central Puget Sound -- have cleaned up polluted waterways, restored damaged lands and estuaries to more natural states, increased open space while refurbishing worn-out districts, and moved to more energy-efficient forms of construction and mobility. Continued growth in the region can in fact present opportunities for us to restore our watersheds, develop more environmentally sensitive approaches to treating storm water, enhance habitat, and pioneer new technologies and industries that benefit both the environment and the regional economy. Creating and maintaining a sustainable environment reflects the choices we make as individuals, as well as our willingness to act as a region. Our greatly improved air quality, our recycling programs started in the 1980s, and local regulations to protect environmentally critical areas in the 1990s are just a few examples of major successes. More recently, the region's ports have stepped up their efforts to reduce pollution. Several communities in the region have daylighted streams that were once funneled into underground pipes. However, even with these successes and many others, significant challenges remain, including cleaning up inland waterways, implementing the recovery strategy for salmon, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Healthy ecosystems are essential to meeting the region’s growth management objectives. A healthy environment contributes to ensuring we have healthy communities. Yet the region’s ecosystems are complex and transcend political boundaries. Ensuring we have a sustainable environment, both now and for future generations, requires regional collaboration. Environmental stewardship is embodied in VISION 2040 and is the responsibility of each jurisdiction within the region.

“When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t

understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the

world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.”

Paul Hawken, Class of 2009 Commencement Address, University of Portland

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Facing Down the Hydro-Crisis By Peter Gleick, World Policy Journal, Winter 2009/10, pp 17 - 23 This article appeared on mitpressjournals.org in 2010. In March 1997, in rural Hebei and Henan Provinces in China, several hundred farmers from neighboring villages clashed over access to water resources to irrigate their crops, leading to dozens of injuries. The rivers that used to supply all their needs were drying up. Two years later, violent conflicts over water escalated in the same region. Hundreds more villagers were injured and water diversion facilities destroyed. In 1999, some 700 soldiers were sent to quell fighting that claimed six lives and injured 60 others in clashes that erupted between two Yemeni villages fighting over a local spring. In 2001, civil unrest in Pakistan over severe water shortages led to protests, riots, and bombings, killing one and injuring dozens. In 2004, a similar dispute in a bordering region of India led to four deaths and more than 30 injuries. Between 2004 and 2006, at least 250 people were killed and many more injured in Somalia and Ethiopia in fighting over water wells and pastoral lands. Villagers there call it the War of the Well and tell stories of "well warlords, well widows, and well warriors." Across the globe, these sorts of public protests, disputes, and violence over water are increasingly common as problems of contamination, shortages, and allocation grow. In rural villages and expanding cities around the world, water is an increasingly scarce and contaminated resource. As populations and water demands continue to expand, the heightened risk of violent conflicts over water use and contamination suggest new calls for fundamental changes in the way we manage and use this precious resource. The world of water is changing--not just how much water is available, or who controls it, but the whole way we think about and manage this precious commodity. The assumptions we made in the last century about the availability and use of water no longer seem to apply. And for water managers, planners, hydrologists, engineers, economists, policy makers, and concerned citizens, the time has come for new thinking and new solutions. Over the past several centuries, societies have developed different technologies, practices, and institutions for supplying safe and reliable freshwater, dealing with extreme events, as well as collecting, treating, and disposing of wastewater. These tools brought enormous benefits to humankind. But they have also failed to solve some of our most difficult water problems, and in key ways they are unsuited to our new challenges. We need a new approach--movement into what I call the Third Water Era. The First Two Water Eras The First Water Era lasted for some millennia, before human civilization evolved out of the most primitive hunter-gatherer existence and struggle for survival. The earliest societies relied on the natural hydrologic cycle to provide water for their use and take away what they didn't want. Put more simply, rivers and streams brought drinking water and fish, and washed away untreated

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detritus and human wastes. While the population of the planet was still small and dispersed, this worked well. Life was brutish and short for most people anyway, and water-related illnesses were dwarfed by the terrible consequences of childbirth, plagues, pox and malnutrition. Over time, this simple approach proved insufficient. As pockets of civilization began to expand and outgrow local water resources, the Second Water Era emerged in the form of intentional manipulation of the water cycle and efforts to apply new technologies, engineering, and institutions to water problems. In the ancient cities of Rome and Greece, the agricultural fields of Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, and other cradles of civilization, new approaches began to

improve on nature's hydrologic cycle. The first dams were built across streams and rivers to divert water to farms for irrigation. The Code of Hammurabi, the judicial code dating back 4,000 years to ancient Babylonia, offers hints of the first laws and regulations governing water use, the design and operation of irrigation canals, and punishments for theft of water. Early engineers built the first canals and aqueducts to move water from places of relative abundance to places of concentrated demand. Wastewater began to be collected and isolated from day-to-day living. These kinds of innovations helped early populations live longer, interact more closely, and create cultures of art, philosophy, and science. In some ways, however, the Second Water Era truly began in the mid-1800s, when versions of our current approaches to water management and use were

developed. Cities in industrializing regions were then outgrowing and contaminating their water supplies; waves of cholera and other water-related diseases were sweeping the world; and human scientific and engineering ingenuity was blossoming. By the middle of the nineteenth century, new tools of observation, statistics, and epidemiology were being tested and there were clues that many health challenges were the result of contaminated water and bad water management.

WHWise

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In 1854, Dr. John Snow, a London physician, conducted a simple yet brilliant test that helped to settle the debate about the transmission of cholera. One of the poorest neighborhoods of London--served by central wells and lacking sewage collection--had been beset by a virulent cholera outbreak. He plotted the homes and numbers of people affected and noted the location of the wells that provided water for the hardest hit neighborhoods. He concluded that the source of contamination was the water from one particular well on Broad Street. He received permission from local authorities to remove the pump handle which forced residents to draw water from other, uncontaminated wells. Within days, the outbreak subsided. As science and medicine revealed more about the sources and prevention of water-related diseases, a revolution in thinking about water swept through the rapidly industrializing world, leading to sewage systems, innovative water treatment, new piping and distribution investments, and efforts to clean up and protect drinking water sources. This era also saw the first physical, chemical, and biological treatment systems for large, centralized volumes of waste. The first dams of gigantic scale were built to hold back floods, supply water in dry periods, and produce reliable, clean electricity. The technology was developed and deployed to build aqueducts--not tens of kilometers dug out of dirt, but thousands of kilometers in length, through or over mountains, from glaciers to the deserts. Large-scale irrigation systems were designed to permit farmers to grow food in places and at times never before possible. What were the consequences of these advances? Cholera and dysentery, rampant in cities like New Orleans, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, London, Paris, Moscow, and other major urban centers in the 1800s, were vanquished in developed nations, largely through the use of chlorine, filtration, and other wastewater treatment processes. The Green Revolution, due as much to the modernization of irrigation as to the application of fertilizer and pesticides, helped hundreds of millions of people avoid massive starvations in the twentieth century as the global population quadrupled from 1.5 billion to 6 billion. And nature's fury--unavoidable floods and droughts--are at least partially controlled and less damaging. The Third Water Era But despite these enormous advances; despite our better understanding and technology; despite the hundreds of billions of dollars spent by utilities, towns, nations, and the international community; we still face a global water crisis of a magnitude unlike any before in human history. Not only have we not solved all of our traditional water problems, but we are now faced with new and difficult challenges. Today, water is taking center stage as the most critical resource issue facing humanity. First, there's the complicated question of supply. The total amount of water on the planet is fixed--neither growing nor shrinking. But as the population continues to grow, per-capita water availability is declining. Moreover, while this crisis is global, the impact is felt most acutely on the regional level. Water demands in some regions are rapidly increasing, as economic growth, new industries, and new technologies produce new and higher water demands. Roughly one-third of the world's population still lacks access to the most basic water services, including 1 billion people without any access to safe and affordable drinking water and 2.4 billion without access to adequate sanitation. The harsh reality is that there are hundreds of millions of cases of water-related diseases and some 2-5 million deaths per year, largely young children. Most are entirely

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preventable. At the same time, industrial activities are contaminating water with vast quantities of man-made pollutants--from the gasoline additive MTBE to perchlorate, endocrine disruptors to pharmaceuticals--the effects of which we only poorly understand. As a Kashmiri proverb warns, "It is easy to throw anything into the river, but difficult to take it out again." As the planet's population surges and a new, global middle class emerges with increased appetites, especially for water-intensive meat, food production has become a critical component of this water crisis. While the area of irrigated land is growing, it is doing so at a declining rate, putting increased pressure on agricultural production. Many regions of the world are suffering from rapid depletion of groundwater resources that are being pumped faster than nature can replenish. By some estimates, as much as 40 percent of our food production comes from such unsustainable water resources. In our oceans and rivers, a growing number of fish species are threatened or endangered by the human use of water. Some aquatic ecosystems have been completely destroyed or irreversibly modified by human water withdrawals. For example, the Aral Sea, nestled on the frontier between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, was once the fourth-largest inland salt-water body. Today, it is barely a quarter of its size a half century ago--thanks to the massive diversion for Soviet irrigation projects of the vast rivers that once fed it. All 24 species of fish found only in the Aral Sea are now extinct. Likewise, nearly one-third of all North American freshwater fauna populations are considered threatened with extinction, a trend mirrored elsewhere around the world. Water flows in average years no longer reach the deltas of many of the world's great rivers, including the Nile, Yellow, Amu Darya, and the Colorado, leading to nutrient depletion, loss of habitat for native fisheries, plummeting populations of birds, erosion of shorelines, and adverse effects on local communities. All of these problems are likely to be made worse by the world's changing climate, which will have an increasing impact on water resources and the systems we built to manage them. As temperatures rise, the need for water will rise; as precipitation patterns change, water availability will change. Glaciers and snowpacks are diminishing, while the frequencies and intensities of storms are more irregular. Meanwhile, water managers are wholly unprepared to meet the demands of a different climate. The final issue, of course, is the world's broad and all but total failure to integrate questions of growth, development, and resource use, of which water may be the number one victim. These pressures come at the very moment the competition for limited freshwater is growing among users, threatening local, regional, and potentially, global stability. Non-Traditional Reactions The first reaction to our water problems is often a traditional, knee-jerk response--that we just need to pay more attention, and put more effort and more money into addressing this crisis. Doing more of the same, however, will not be enough. In fact, while the tools and methods used in the Second Water Era brought great benefits, they also brought huge and unexpected economic, social, political, and environmental costs. It is high time to look for new ideas and answers. Over the past two decades, with little fanfare and recognition, a new way of thinking about water has been taking shape. Community-scale sanitation and hygiene projects have been

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developed, tested, and implemented. New technologies for water treatment are being brought to market. And innovative forms of information and communication are appearing at an astounding rate, permitting successful solutions to be more quickly and widely appreciated and implemented. This new era requires nothing short of a revolution in thinking about water--a fundamental re-evaluation of water planning, policy, and management. We need to utilize technology, environmental science, economics, and new institutional approaches to address unresolved water challenges and to tackle new threats, such as climate change. We need what the Pacific Institute calls a Soft Path for Water. First, the top priority is to meet the basic water requirements for all humans and all ecosystems. Governments, international aid organizations, corporations, and private groups at all levels must join forces to meet the goal of providing these basic needs universally. The economic costs of meeting these needs are far less than the economic costs of failing to do so. Some efforts are currently underway. But funding, agreements to transfer technology and information, and institutional efforts on the part of international agencies and local governments are all inadequate. For basic human needs, the efforts of the world community through the Millennium Development Goals are a key beginning. These goals include the targets of expanding access to water and sanitation for the world's poor. For basic ecosystem needs, there are new efforts to identify, define, and satisfy water requirements through policy initiatives. In North America, efforts to provide basic river flows or restore ecosystem health are underway in the Florida Everglades, the Great Lakes, the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta, and many other places. In South Africa, the constitution guarantees meeting the basic water needs of both humans and the environment. And in Europe and Asia, there are proposals for new standards for environmental management. Just as in battling climate change, the United States has an opportunity to be a player in solving water issues through smarter funding and the utilization of our vast scientific, technological, and educational resources. But we are not yet playing that role to the extent of our ability, either at home or abroad. Second, we must rethink our approach to both water supply and demand. On the demand side, there is vast potential to become more efficient in how we use water, in every community, in every use--from industry to commerce, from homes to farms. Our societal goals are not the "use" of water, but providing goods and services to society: getting rid of wastes, producing industrial output, washing our clothes and bodies, and growing more food. While most of these steps require water, there is tremendous potential to reduce the amount of water needed to accomplish these goals. If we can do these things with less and less water, we will be better off. We are already making progress in this area: overall water use in the United States is lower today than it was some 35 years ago; China is beginning to raise water prices to encourage conservation and efficiency; Mexico City is beginning a major effort to find and stop leaks that prevent water from reaching consumers; and Singapore's water conservation programs, coupled with innovative new supply developments, have helped reduce its dependence on imported water from Malaysia. It is possible to break the assumed connection between economic growth and water use. Indeed, improving efficiency is perhaps the most important new tool in our arsenal.

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At the same time, we must also rethink our water supply alternatives. The traditional approach of building dams, aqueducts, and central irrigation systems to take more water from vulnerable ecosystems and watersheds is unsustainable. New approaches must be developed. In many countries, new water management infrastructure is still needed, but it will have to be built to better economic, social, and environmental standards. The days of misleading and incomplete cost-benefit analyses--ecosystems ignored, social impacts hidden, and communities left out of the decision-making process--must be brought to an end. But we should also expand the definition of what we consider new "supply." Water supply must also include increased use of recycled and reclaimed water, rainwater harvesting, desalination (where appropriate), and innovative blended use of surface and groundwater. In Namibia, Singapore, and California, wastewater is increasingly treated to a very high standard and reused for industrial or commercial purposes, even for drinking. And in India, traditional rainwater harvesting is once again restoring groundwater and stream flows, reviving communities and giving new options to struggling farmers.

Third, we must do a better job of protecting water quality and matching requirements to demands. Why is expensive potable water still widely used to make our golf courses green or flush our toilets, when other water is readily available? In the western United States and other regions, where water is scarce, lower quality alternatives are already being used. In developing nations, new technologies are beginning to offer better, cheaper, and more reliable water-quality monitoring to protect human health. But governments must improve and strengthen standards for water quality and more aggressively enforce those standards. Greater attention to water quality will not only save lives and protect ecosystem health, it will also expand the amount of water

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resources available for use. In China, for example, as much as 40 percent of water is too contaminated to use for domestic and agricultural purposes. Accelerating the construction of modern wastewater collection and treatment systems and enforcing laws against polluters can help stop the needless sickness and death that result from the consumption of dirty water, while simultaneously increasing the volume of water that can be used to meet agricultural requirements--and that now simply goes to waste. Fourth, global climate changes are coming; indeed, they are already upon us. Humans are altering the composition of the atmosphere in a way that is guaranteed to alter the climate for centuries to come. The scientific evidence that climate change is already affecting our water resources is rapidly accumulating. We are seeing the loss of snowpack in the world's mountain ranges. The glaciers of the Rockies, Himalayas, and Andes are fast disappearing, which will affect downstream communities that depend on the water stored in these mountains. The timing of rainfall and runoff is shifting. Billions of people and the coastal infrastructures on which they depend are vulnerable to storms and rising sea levels. These risks impel legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and plans for adapting and mitigating the impacts that are now, sadly, unavoidable. With regard to building the facilities required for sustainable water management, climate change must be considered. Wastewater treatment plants and desalination facilities along coastlines must take into account sea levels of the future, not of yesterday. And ongoing projects to dam rivers and tap into groundwater aquifers must consider how future climatic conditions will affect operations and hydrology. In short, we must manage our water systems for tomorrow's climate or face the reality that they might be obsolete before the final brick is laid. Finally, we must improve institutions that manage our water resources, including utilities, planning agencies, government bureaucracies, and companies. Charles Darwin observed that "if the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin." Well, we must then repent. The failure to solve our water problems is not the result of a lack of water, money, or knowledge. Ultimately, it is the failure of our institutions. Universities will have to broaden what they teach about water---expanding beyond simple engineering to smart economics, sociology, and political science. Water utilities must devise innovative environmental management systems that permit them to sustainably satisfy the needs of both human and natural ecosystems. Government planning agencies must make real efforts to integrate growth, planning, and water resource issues by prohibiting development in regions with inadequate water resources or limiting the kinds of development to "green," low-water-use design and construction. New collaborations are required among farmers, environmentalists, industry, and water agencies to reduce the risks of violence over diminished water resources. And an innovative set of economic tools must begin to set reasonable pricing incentives to encourage efficient and sustainable use of water and eliminate subsidies that promote bad practices. What will the future bring? Are we as humans condemned to a perpetual water crisis and growing conflicts over water? This unwanted and dangerous path can now be seen far more clearly than ever before, and at this critical juncture, every step we make will affect the course we follow. As population growth and development pushes us even closer to the limits of our water supply, our focus must shift to a new way of thinking. Water is a precious, scarce, and vital resource and our use of it must be thoughtful, sustainable, and carefully planned.

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Flight Of The Hummingbird Parable For The Environment From the book Flight of the Hummingbird, by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, published 2008 by Greystone Books, an imprint of D&M Publishers Inc. Reprinted with permission from the publisher. Here is the story of the great forest that caught on fire. The terrible fire raged and burned. All of the animals were afraid and fled from their homes. The elephant and the tiger, the beaver and the bear all ran, and above them the birds flew in a panic. They huddled at the edge of the forest and watched. All the creatures gathered except one. Only Dukdukdiya, the little hummingbird, would not abandon the forest. Dukdukdiya flew quickly to the stream. She picked up a single drop of water in her beak. Dudukdiya flew back and dropped the water on the fire. Again she flew to the stream and brought back another drop, and so she continued -- back and forth, back and forth. The other animals watched Dukdukdiya’s tiny body fly against the enormous fire, and they were frightened. They called out to the little hummingbird, warning her of the dangers of the smoke and the heat. “What can I do?” sobbed the rabbit. “This fire is much too hot.” “There is too much smoke!” howled the wolf. “My wings will burn! My beak is too small!” cried the owl. But the little hummingbird persisted. She flew to and fro, picking up more water and dropping it, bead by bead, onto the burning forest. Finally, the big bear said, “Little Dukdukdiya, what are you doing?” Without stopping, Dukdukdiya looked down at all of the animals. She said, “I am doing what I can.” The end of the story is to be written by each and every one of us through our individual and collective efforts ...

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POSSIBLE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. Sandra Postel in Water: Will There Be Enough makes a case that we need to “shift course” in how we use water at the national, community and personal levels. She ends the article stating, “It’s still possible to have a future in which all basic food and water needs are met, healthy ecosystems are sustained, and communities remain secure and resilient…” Do you agree? Why or why not? 2. Vision 2040 for Central Puget Sound presents many ways to improve ecosystem conditions. Is there one in particular that personally appeals to your energies, and why? 3. In Facing Down the Hydro-Crisis, Peter Gleick challenges that we need a revolution in thinking about water policy and management. What do you think? 4. Are you more like Little Dukdukdiya, the hummingbird, or the other animals? Why? 5. What single item will you do differently regarding the stewardship of water as a result of taking this course? 6. Where do we go from here, individually and as a group, now that the course is over.

CELEBRATE Share Your Accomplishments in this Course with Each Other

FURTHER READING & RESOURCES • Peter H. Gleick , The World’s Water 2008-2009, January 2009. Examination of the key trends surrounding freshwater resources and their use: water and climate change, water in China, status of the Millennium Development Goals for water, peak water, efficient urban water use and business reporting on water. • James Workman, Heart of Dryness, August 2009. 21st century water issues and unexpected solutions from the tribes of the Kalahari Desert . • Brock Dolman, Basins of Relations: A Citizen's Guide to Protecting and Restoring

Our Watersheds Find this book and more on www.oaecwater.org.

This curriculum contains material reprinted with permission. Opinions expressed within articles are those of the authors and may not represent those of Washington State University Extension. Articles are presented to promote discussion of topics related to water use. Issued by Washington State University Extension and the U.S. Department of Agriculture in furtherance of the Acts of May 8 and June 30, 1914. Extension programs and policies are consistent with federal and state laws and regulations on nondiscrimination regarding race, sex, religion, age, color, creed, and national or ethnic origin; physical, mental, or sensory disability; marital status or sexual orientation; and status as a Vietnam-era or disabled veteran. Evidence of noncompliance may be reported through your local WSU Extension office. Trade names have been used to simplify information; no endorsement is intended.