Blue Gold in Jeopardy?
When approaching a remote planet with their sophisticated instruments, one of the first things astronomers look for is water or traces of water. After all, the presence of H 2O is one of the surest indicators that an environment could have sheltered living beings at some point - however hostile it may appear.
So when we found out through space probes that there had once been water on the surface of Mars, the very idea of life on the red planet suddenly became more plausible, even though these "Martians" were most likely just very simple, basic, unicellular organisms.
 From the point of view of life itself, the value of "blue gold" by far exceeds that of yellow gold despite the fact that we see it pour out of the tap every day - at least in developed countries. This illustrates what is called the diamond-water paradox: Although in terms of survival, water is more useful than diamonds, diamonds command a higher price in the market because water is so widely available.
However, the market value of blue gold could undergo dramatic change, since the global water supply is already alarmingly low - even in North America. Global warming, chemical pollution, aging infrastructures and population growth (which is predicted to reach 40% to 50% by 2040) are taxing this essential resource more and more.
Taking action is possible
According to the World Water Council, the problem is not the lack of water, but how we manage the water we do have. Encouragingly, however, an increasing number of people and organizations realize that our freshwater resources are limited and that they need to be protected both in terms of quantity and quality.
The global water challenge affects not only the water community, but also decision-makers and every human being. That's why one of the key messages of the 2nd World Water Forum was, "Water is everybody's business".
Rather than spending billions of dollars to build massive dams and large-scale infrastructure, the Pacific Institute suggests we use what it calls "soft path" solutions to the global water crisis. These soft path solutions aim to fill the needs of the global population through various strategies, such as:
- improving the productivity of the water that is available
- complementing centrally-planned infrastructure with community scale projects
- leveraging new technologies
The Pacific Institute is also calling for an ambitious global initiative: To provide all of the world's schools with safe water, adequate sanitation and hygiene education by 2018.
We can all do our share!
In the meantime, according to experts, each one of us has a role to play. No matter where we are, who we are and what use we make of H 2O (whether for agriculture or industry or as individuals), we can save water in suprising quantities - which is the theme of the next in this series of articles.
After all, we wouldn't want astronomers from a remote galaxy to find "traces of water" on the surface of our planet someday, would we?
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