Green Options

By Lester R. Brown

To understand our current environmental dilemma, it helps to look at earlier civilizations that also got into environmental trouble. Our early twenty-first century civilization is not the first to face the prospect of environmentally induced economic decline. The question is how we will respond.

As Jared Diamond points out in his book Collapse, some of the early societies that were in environmental trouble were able to change their ways in time to avoid decline and collapse. Six centuries ago, for example, Icelanders realized that overgrazing on their grass-covered highlands was leading to extensive soil loss from the inherently thin soils of the region. Rather than lose the grasslands and face economic decline, farmers joined together to determine how many sheep the highlands could sustain and then allocated quotas among themselves, thus preserving their grasslands. Their wool production and woolen goods industry continue to thrive today.

Not all societies have fared as well as the Icelanders. The early Sumerian civilization of the fourth millennium BC had advanced far beyond any that had existed before. Its carefully engineered irrigation system gave rise to a highly productive agriculture, one that enabled farmers to produce a food surplus, supporting formation of the first cities and the first written language, cuneiform.

By any measure it was an extraordinary civilization, but there was an environmental flaw in the design of its irrigation system, one that would eventually undermine its food supply. The water that backed up behind dams built across the Euphrates was diverted onto the land through a network of gravity-fed canals. As with most irrigation systems, some irrigation water percolated downward. In this region, where underground drainage was weak, this slowly raised the water table. As the water climbed to within inches of the surface, it began to evaporate into the atmosphere, leaving behind salt. Over time, the accumulation of salt on the soil surface lowered the land’s productivity.

Shifting from wheat to barley, a more salt-tolerant plant, postponed Sumer’s decline, but it was treating the symptoms, not the cause, of their falling crop yields. As salt concentrations continued to build, the yields of barley eventually declined also. The resultant shrinkage of the food supply undermined this once-great civilization. As land productivity declined, so did the civilization.

This is a guest post by Meg Hamill who works at the environmental non-profit LandPaths, in partnership with the Open Space District of Sonoma County, California.

As you read this, there is progress being made on a report entitled “Global Trends 2025.” Prominent analysts in the US intelligence community are currently compiling the report, which will be presented to the incoming president of the United States early in 2009. [...]

By Lester R. Brown

With water shortages emerging as a constraint on food production growth, the world needs an effort to raise water productivity similar to the one that nearly tripled land productivity during the last half of the twentieth century. Worldwide, average irrigation water productivity is now roughly 1 kilogram of grain per ton of water used. Since it takes 1,000 tons of water to produce 1 ton of grain, it is not surprising that 70 percent of world water use is devoted to irrigation. Thus, raising irrigation efficiency is central to raising water productivity overall.

In surface water projects—that is, dams that deliver water to farmers through a network of canals—crop usage of irrigation water never reaches 100 percent simply because some irrigation water evaporates, some percolates downward, and some runs off. Water policy analysts Sandra Postel and Amy Vickers found that “surface water irrigation efficiency ranges between 25 and 40 percent in India, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand; between 40 and 45 percent in Malaysia and Morocco; and between 50 and 60 percent in Israel, Japan, and Taiwan.” Irrigation water efficiency is affected not only by the type and condition of irrigation systems but also by soil type, temperature, and humidity. In hot arid regions, the evaporation of irrigation water is far higher than in cooler humid regions.

In 2004, China’s Minister of Water Resources Wang Shucheng outlined for me plans to raise China’s irrigation efficiency from 43 percent in 2000 to 51 percent in 2010 and then to 55 percent in 2030. The steps he described included raising the price of water, providing incentives for adopting more irrigation-efficient technologies, and developing the local institutions to manage this process. Reaching these goals, he felt, would assure China’s future food security.

We have heard about China’s air quality and pollution woes recently in the media , especially as the start of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games approaches. A new report released last week adds yet another dimension to China’s environmental concerns.

According to a report entitled Beijing’s Water Crisis: 1949—2008 Olympics, published by Probe International, China’s policy of transferring water from draught-ridden neighborhoods to the nation’s capital in order to meet water needs for the upcoming Olympics is harming China’s environment and local farming economies.

Moreover, the abuse of water supplies contradicts the games’ “green” theme and supposed commitment to sustainability.

Expo 2008, the international exposition on water and sustainable development, opened its doors to the world on Saturday in the Spanish city of Zaragoza.

Situated along Spain’s largest River, the Ebro, the 62-acre expo aims to inform people on global water issues and serve as a discussion forum for advocates and international policy makers. A goal of the expo is to produce a “Zaragoza Charter” which will detail recommendations to address such issues as access to clean water, water scarcity, water wars, and water conservation.

Note: this article is part of this week’s EcoWorldly cycling series: Cycling and its importance in countries around the world.

As a writer on global writer issues, I wasn’t quite sure what to do when my writing colleagues at EcoWorldly suggested that we all contribute to a series on bicycling.

Bikes and water: could the two really be related? To my pleasant surprise, they are indeed!

I learned about several organizations dedicated to providing people in developing nations with the means to get clean water through the use of bicycles.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a statewide drought today, following two straight years of below-average rainfall, very low snowmelt runoff and the largest court-ordered water transfer restrictions of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in state history.

The governor also issued an Executive Order meant to address related problems caused by the water shortages, such as extreme fire danger due to dry conditions, economic harm to urban and rural communities, loss of crops and the potential to degrade water [...]

Water is essential for life, but humans are placing a growing burden on this natural resource … risking our own future well-being. More and more news comes out every day about the dangerous game we’re playing with our water supplies, and a growing number of people are warning water could become just as volatile an issue as oil in years to come.

Consider some of these water facts, and the implications they have for humanity:

Just this week, Sandia National Laboratories warned more than half the countries in the world could face “freshwater stress or shortages” by 2025. By 2050, that percentage could rise to 75 percent.

How do we meet the world’s future energy demands? Not an easy question, but it gets even more complicated when you factor in another critical need: water.

While water hasn’t always been factored into energy discussions — or vice versa — the two are “inextricably linked,” according to Sandia National Laboratories. That’s why researchers there are working [...]