Lecture diary 3: Water Management

Water is one of the many precious resources that this plant is blessed with. Even if most of the surface of the earth is covered with this resource, only a small percentage of it is usable. That is why water management gaining more and more ground in the modern era. Even if I am not in agreement with the quote from the lecture that stated 21 century wars could be fought for water instead of oil, I firmly believe that, with unwise water management practices, regional conflicts would be inevitable. The recent tension between the Nile basin countries in east Africa can be cited as good example.

Concerning scarcity.....

In the lecture it was also discussed that mostly the middle eastern countries and northern Africa would face a critical scarcity in water at the beginning of the next decade.I think the participants made the forecast based on the geographical and climatic conditions of the countries. But in my opinion, the term scarcity in water context should consider the legislative aspect too. In some areas, even if there is abundant water resources, due to lack of fair legislation on how to use it, people could not harass the resource as they want. A good example for this - once again - are the Nile basin countries. Because of the old aged legislation that highly favor only few of the basin countries, most of the upper stream countries are susceptible to drought and hunger even if a large amount of the resource either originates from or crosses their land.

On global Changes.....

It is quite obvious that global changes like climate change, population growth, urbanization and the like have strong interaction with water. Issues raised related to climate change are mainly those of rises in sea level that eventually reduces fresh water. Moreover urbanization and energy production as they are water thirst processes,efficient water management system is a must to cope up with these global trends. But most importantly, as over population is the root of all the problems, I suggest that a wise water management strategy should also focus on how to directly or indirectly tackle this problem.