Global Freshwater Resources:

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Global Freshwater Resources

• Soft-Path Solutions for the 21st Century
• By Peter H. Gleick

Summary Jose A. Becerra Critique Nicholas
Layshot
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• The world is in a transition
• Hard Path brought benefits
• Also brought problems
• People displaced
• 27 of North American fauna threatened
• Water dont reach river deltas

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Hard path pursued

• Arid North America
• Colorado River
• Calls for new dams in Western U.S.
• Failure to meet basic human needs for water
• United nations general assembly goals
• Unlikely to be achieved given actual levels of
  financial and political commitment

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• Aid to water supply and sanitation by donor
  (1996-2001)

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20th Century water policy and planning

• Water planners focused in
• Identify and meet growing demands for water
• Long-range demand projections
• Constructing large facilities to
• Store
• Move
• Treat water

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• Problem
• Long-term projections uncertainty
• 3-basic futures are considered

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• costs of hard-path approach keep increasing
• 180 billion/yr to 2025 assuming industrialized
  level expending
• Meeting basic human demand appropriate technology
  10-25 next 2 decades
• Hard path less attractive,
• New, and old ideas revived
• Harvesting rain water

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A new approach for water soft-path

• One that continues to rely on centralized
  infrastructure
• Complemented with small scale decentralized
  facilities
• Delivering water depending on needs

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• Hard-path
• Seeking endless sources of water supply

• Soft-path
• Striving to improve the productivity of water use

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What do we need to do?

• Change our ideology from
• use of water well being
• To improved social and individual well-being per
  unit of water used.
• use of water (not equal) well being
• We are used to water based sanitation
• US largest domestic user of water toilet
  (2decgt75)

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Examples of pieces of softh-path

• Study for potential for water conservation
• Urban sector in California
• Residential
• Commercial
• Industrial
• With 65 we can meet the demand

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• Agricultural Sector
• Changing irrigation technologies
• Study crop characteristics to produce more/w unit
• Improvements from
• Drip irrigation 95 efficiency
• Change in plants varieties
• Low-energy precision sprinklers
• More info when and where to irrigate

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• Industrial Facilities
• Finding new ways to reduce water and recycle
  water
• Dairy industry 1970s
• 200 mm silicon wafer 30 gal/in2
• 6 gal/in2 end of 2003

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Starting to see changes

• Efficiency of water use in late 1990s has
  improved from 2 decades ago
• Population and economy has increased
• More money should be devoted for the water
  problem
• Long-term water planning should include all
  stakeholders not just Engineers and hydrologists

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Summary

• 20th century Hard path
• Construction of massive infrastructure
• Dams
• Aqueducts
• Pipelines
• Complex centralized treatment plants
• Brought social and economic problems

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• Soft path
• Combining hard-path with new ideas
• Meet needs of people not just supply water
• Change our mentality
• Include more factors, and people in decision
  making policies

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Critique
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Main Topics

• Author Peter H. Gleick Credibility
• Positives
• Negatives

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Peter H. Gleick Credibility
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• Education
• PhD, Berkeley, Energy and Resources, 1986
• MS, Berkeley, Energy and Resources, 1980
• BS, Yale, Eng. Applied Science, 1978

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• Professional Employment
• Pacific Institute for Studies in Development,
  Environment, and security
• Co-founder and president 1987-present
• MacArthur Foundation Research and Writing
  Fellowship 1988-1990
• Office of Governor of California
• Deputy Assistant for energy and Environment
  1980-82

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Positives
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• Well organized
• Problem
• 20th Century Policy
• New Approach

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• Good Topics
• Problem
• Talked not only about people but animals as well
• Freshwater Fauna threatened
• Adequate flows dont reach deltas
• People displaced
• Bad Water
• Deaths

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• 20th Century Policy
• Hard-Path
• Focus
• Tools used
• Long construction times
• must forecast

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• New Approach
• Soft-Path solution
• Centralized infrastructure complemented with
  small-scale decentralized facilities
• Improve productivity of water use

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• Enough Data to support problem statement
• 5 tables/graphs
• Ex. Current Aid given (Table 1)
• Numbers
• Ex. 1 billion lack access to safe drinking water
• Water need estimates (Fig. 3)

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• Resources Notes
• 46
• Mostly dated from 2000-2003

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Negatives
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• Soft-Path argument needs to be stronger
• Theory presented clearly but not enough data
  supporting theory

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• Vague Data
• Future estimates dont seem to be accurate
• Ex. Fig 3

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