Brazil/Global: Water Pricing, Not Engineering, Will Ease Looming Water Shortages
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reprint Authorities in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, recently announced that if current drought conditions persisted, they would be forced to restrict water availability for the city of 20 million to only two days per week.
The economic and social implications of such a decision are staggering. One senior water official admitted that residents might have to “get out of São Paulo” in order to bathe. The same combination of increased demand and decreased supply that afflicts
São Paulo’s water supply is also gripping the American West, and we would be fools not to think that some Western cities might end up like the Brazilian city — and not in some distant future. Poor planning, climate change and an over-reliance on engineering solutions to water scarcity problems threaten cities across the globe. Unless policy makers in Washington and state capitals heed the lessons of Brazil and other countries facing crippling water scarcity, parts of America will also be left high and dry in the decades to come. Like the water of most large cities around the world, São Paulo’s is supplied through a giant system of canals, reservoirs and pipes that transport water to the city from hundreds of miles away. Although the system has worked for decades, it has failed to keep pace with increasing demand as the city’s population has grown.
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São Paulo’s water supply is also gripping the American West, and we would be fools not to think that some Western cities might end up like the Brazilian city — and not in some distant future. Poor planning, climate change and an over-reliance on engineering solutions to water scarcity problems threaten cities across the globe. Unless policy makers in Washington and state capitals heed the lessons of Brazil and other countries facing crippling water scarcity, parts of America will also be left high and dry in the decades to come. Like the water of most large cities around the world, São Paulo’s is supplied through a giant system of canals, reservoirs and pipes that transport water to the city from hundreds of miles away. Although the system has worked for decades, it has failed to keep pace with increasing demand as the city’s population has grown.
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Even more important, destruction of the Amazon rain forest has reduced rainfall in the region that supplies São Paulo’s water, even as climate change has made Brazil more susceptible to a vicious cycle of flooding and drought. Above all, this crisis shows the limits that human and natural changes are placing on engineering solutions to water scarcity. Yet Brazilian water officials are promising more of the same, planning yet another set of reservoirs and canals to supply water to São Paulo from even more distant sources. In trying to engineer their way out of water scarcity, Brazil’s leaders are repeating mistakes made by their American counterparts. California and Arizona are among the Western states that rely on their own giant feats of engineering to pump water from mountain streams and rivers like the Colorado to such cities as Los Angeles and Phoenix. But strains are beginning to show. In the Colorado River basin, a 14-year drought has forced federal officials to begin rationing the river’s flow into Lake Mead, which functions as a giant reservoir for downstream Arizona and California. Earlier this year, NASA warned that “mega-droughts” were likely to become more common throughout the Southwest. In light of this new reality, American policy makers should take three important steps to change how the country deals with drought and water scarcity. First, the United States needs to move away from engineering solutions in favor of economic approaches. In most parts of the country, water prices are simply too low, giving users little incentive to conserve and to adopt new, more water-efficient technology. One promising solution is to create water markets that allow people to buy and sell rights to use water. Read the entire reprint ... // empowered by scharnhorst-csa.blogspot.com).Download now the Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management Q01/2015 free of Charge from: http://bit.ly/1xkJRZS and learn more about urban water supply... continue to discuss the issues via sustainability2.0: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/104496231474687499876 and subscribe to the free mirror | first reader: http://goo.gl/2D9xT
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