tagged w/ Water management
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Improving the sustainability of U.S. agriculture requires broad, transformational shifts in market structure, policy incentives, and the type and availability of scientific knowledge, asserts a "Policy Forum" paper in the May 6, 2011 edition of the journal Science, co-authored by a horticultural scientist from North Carolina State Univ.
The paper, written by members of a National Research Council committee charged with assessing the landscape of American agriculture, states that U.S. agriculture is at a crossroads. Farms must provide abundant and affordable food, feed, fiber and fuel, yet their economic viability is threatened by numerous factors, including—but not limited to—dwindling resources, climate change, and market volatility.
"With the multiple constraints we face, we can't rely solely on incremental changes to existing farming systems to improve the sustainability and productivity of U.S. agriculture," says Dr. Julia Kornegay, a professor of horticultural science at NC State who chaired the NRC committee. "To increase agriculture resilience and productivity with less water, fertilizer, and pesticides, we need to look at agriculture as an agroecosystem at both the farm and landscape level, and maximize the use of natural resources like soil fertility and organic matter to provide better water-holding capacity, nutrients, and disease management."
The paper stems from a 2010 report conducted by the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council, titled Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century. That report defines sustainable agriculture as a system that can satisfy human food, feed, and fiber needs, and contribute to biofuel needs; enhance environmental quality and the resource base; sustain the economic viability of agriculture; and enhance the quality of life for farmers, farm workers, and society as a whole.
The report takes a comprehensive look at the challenges faced by U.S. agriculture—including population growth, water and land scarcities, cost of energy and fertilizers, and other factors—and examines some existing, innovative, sustainable farming systems that, if scaled up, could help steer agriculture onto the path of sustainability.
"Our study looked at a number of farms across the U.S. that have successfully implemented a wide variety of sustainable farming practices. In fact, much of the innovation in sustainable agriculture systems is coming from farmers," Kornegay says. "Why aren't these systems and practices more widely adopted? What are the barriers to sustainable agriculture?"
Increased complexity in how farms are managed, and the availability of information about how a sustainable farming system works, are important considerations, she adds. Which is why change must come both from the top—farm policy—and from the bottom—individual farmers themselves.
"We're not saying that every farm needs to become an organic farm," she says. "Instead, we need to provide incentives to farmers in the next Farm Bill for the adoption of sustainable practices.Improving the sustainability of U.S. agriculture requires broad, transformational... more
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This year's theme for World Water Day is Water For Cities. More people are moving to urban areas, the majority of this migration taking place in the developing world. This is in part due to expansion of corporate landgrabs, deforestation, overpopulation and effects of biodistress that push people into urban areas looking for a way to survive as agriculture which is the main way of life is impacted greatly.
Three quarters of our population is predicted to be living in cities by 2050 which will put a tremendous strain on infrastructure, water quality, water access and sanitation, which then leads to an increase in waterborne diseases.
Access to clean water is the moral challenge of our time and our right. So please, tomorrow take time to reflect upon the importance of clean water, water access and sanitation for those in our world lacking it. We take so much for granted here in America regarding water and the ability to have sanitation that leads to better health.
This site lists events globally and I will be posting about events in this thread as well as listing organizations working to provide clean water and sanitation and how you can help, as well as other entries about the importance of this most beautiful life giving resource.
Please feel free also to add poems, videos, comments, etc.about water here and make a pledge that for this and the next generation we will work to see all with clean water that revives our bodies and souls. This is one way that can lead people out of poverty and into a world of health and peace.
Thank you
http://current.com/groups/water-is-life/This year's theme for World Water Day is Water For Cities. More people are moving... more
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The phrase “water management” means a lot of things. From how to efficiently distribute water to the public, making sure water is sanitized or managing the sewage or waste water, this broad term has many meanings. Here are the most interesting water management blogs on the web that can help you learn about this vital resource.
link: http://mastersinpublicadministration.com/30-most-interesting-water-management-blogsThe phrase “water management” means a lot of things. From how to... more
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The mayor of the Turkish Aegean town of Dikili has escaped charges of "misconduct of office" and "abuse of power" stemming from his decision to provide up to 10 tons of water free of charge to district residents in a stand against water privatization.
Mayor Osman Özgüven and other municipality officials were acquitted Wednesday in a Dikili criminal court after standing trial for not charging local households for monthly water consumption below 10 tons, giving discounts on usage above that amount to municipal employees, making public buses free to ride, providing affordable health services at a government clinic, and selling bread in municipal bakeries at lower than market prices.
According to the mayor, providing a certain amount of water for free also helped encourage people to consume no more than that, in addition to helping meet some of his citizens' financial needs.
Water is a 'Right of Life'
"The court accepted our activities as a public service. It registered that water should not have to be purchased with money and should not be commercialized," Özgüven told the human-rights-focused news service Bianet. "This is what we claimed from the very beginning. This is a right of life and addresses [the needs of] humanity."
The mayor's practices had been cited by the global progressive think-tank the Transnational Institute as an example of "progressive public water management."
Privatization Controversies
Water privatization has been a controversial issue in Turkey, as it has been in other countries around the world. More than a dozen people were arrested in the northwestern city of Edirne in 2008 on corruption charges related to the transfer of the city's water and waste-water treatment facilities to a private-sector firm. And activists protested privatization at last year's World Water Forum in Istanbul, where most people of a variety of income classes drink home-delivered bottled water.
continuedThe mayor of the Turkish Aegean town of Dikili has escaped charges of "misconduct... more
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Ken Henry, the head of the Treasury, one of Australia’s most senior public servants, told an environmentalists’ jamboree recently: “Water management on this driest inhabited continent on earth has been a disgrace.”
The federal government in Canberra has told the authority to produce a plan next year for sustaining the entire river system, to which the four states must defer. Farmers along the Darling worry that irrigated agriculture will take second place in the plan to billabongs (oxbow lakes), wetlands and other environmental needs that have suffered for decades. Before the floods, the knotty rules governing farmers’ water rights had slashed by two-thirds the average volumes they were allowed to extract each year.
Diminishing water rights may be one reason why Clyde Agriculture, one of Australia’s biggest farming companies, is selling its 12 properties. Four are near Bourke, a Darling river town where Clyde (a subsidiary of the British-based Swire group) has been an economic mainstay for 20 years.
For the moment, the floods have allowed the Darling’s farmers to fill their reservoirs. Cotton, fruit and other thirsty crops, planted in an arid region where sheep and cattle once ruled, should produce bumper harvests next season. But David Harriss of the NSW Office of Water, a state-government body, can see the outback’s boom-bust cycle returning after the rivers fall again. “Water is like gold now,” he says. “We’re running out of the stuff.”
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15963979Ken Henry, the head of the Treasury, one of Australia’s most senior public... more
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Just as diminishing supplies of oil and natural gas are wrenching the economy and producing changes in lifestyles built on the principle of plenty, states and communities across the country are confronting another significant impediment to the American way of life: increased competition for scarce water.
Scientists and resource specialists say freshwater scarcity, even in unexpected places, threatens farm productivity, limits growth, increases business expenses, and drains local treasuries.
In May, for example, Brockton, Massachusetts, inaugurated a brand-new, $60 million reverse osmosis desalinization plant to supply a portion of its drinking water. The Atlantic coast city, which receives four feet of rain annually, was nevertheless so short of freshwater that it was converting brackish water into water people actually could drink.
Builders in the Southeast are confronting limits to planting gardens and lawns for new houses as a result of local water restrictions prompted by a continuing drought. The Ogallala Aquifer, the vast underground reservoir beneath the Great Plains, is steadily being depleted. California experienced the driest spring on record this year.
And scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego forecast that within 13 years Lake Mead and Lake Powell along the Colorado River, the two largest reservoirs in the southwest United States, could become “dead pool” mud puddles.
…we don’t have anybody thinking long range, at the big picture…“The whole picture is not pretty, and I don’t think that anyone has looked at the subject with the point of view of what’s sustainable,” said Tim Barnett, a research marine geophysicist at Scripps and co-author of the study. “We don’t have anybody thinking long range, at the big picture that would put the clamps on large-scale development.”
Era of Water Scarcity
“I truly believe we’re moving into an era of water scarcity throughout the United States,” said Peter Gleick, science advisor to Circle of Blue and president of the Pacific Institute, a think tank specializing in water issues based in Oakland, California. “That by itself is going to force us to adopt more efficient management techniques.”
The U.S. Drought Monitor, a weekly online report produced by the Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, shows that severe drought still grips much of the American Southeast, is spreading east from California across the Rocky Mountains, and has also settled in the Texas Panhandle and parts of Oklahoma and Colorado.
While agriculture in the Colorado Basin faces shortages, farmers to the east in the high plains — tapping the Ogallala Aquifer — have progressively seen their wells dry up. The aquifer is the largest in the United States and sees a depletion rate of some 12 billion cubic meters a year, a quantity equivalent to 18 times the annual flow of the Colorado River. Since pumping started in the 1940s, Ogallala water levels have dropped by more than 100 feet (30 meters) in some areas.
In an interview with Circle of Blue, Kevin Dennehy, program coordinator for the Ground-Water Resources Program at the U.S. Geological Survey, said, “The problem with the aquifer is that it’s a limited resource. There is not an unlimited supply, so the recharge is much less than the withdrawals.”
There is no other water available.The prognosis for farmers, whose irrigation accounts for 94 percent of the groundwater use on the high plains, does not look optimistic. In the future, irrigation may not be possible at all as the levels continue to drop past the well intakes of farmers. More likely, before the pumping stops, the cost of drilling and maintaining deeper wells may exceed the value of what can be grown, severely limiting the farmland’s value. “There is no other water available,” said Dennehy.
more at the linkJust as diminishing supplies of oil and natural gas are wrenching the economy and... more
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There's a one-in-two chance that the water reservoirs of the Colorado River will dry up by 2050 if water management practices remain unchanged in our warming world, a new study finds.There's a one-in-two chance that the water reservoirs of the Colorado River will... more
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Today, Ecojustice and the Pembina Institute will present evidence that oil sands development threatens Alberta's freshwater at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development Hearings, also known as the Oil and Water Hearings. The groups will show that the federal government's mismanagement of oil sands development has failed to protect the environment.
"The federal government has been missing in action in terms of regulating the oil sands industry, and its absence has come at the expense of the environment and the long-term interests of Canadians," says Simon Dyer, Oil Sands Program Director at the Pembina Institute. "Their failure to act has created severe risks, ranging from contamination by leaking tailings lakes to the collapse of fisheries. Ironically, this unchecked development even threatens the future of the oil sands mining industry itself."
The evidence presented by Ecojustice (formerly Sierra Legal Defence Fund) and the Pembina Institute will demonstrate a pattern of neglect related to oil sands development and its impacts on water.
The government failures include
failing to protect the water flows of the Athabasca River
failing to address the issue of leaking toxic tailings lakes, which have already grown to cover
an area greater than the City of Vancouver
failing to provide adequate oversight and involvement in environmental monitoring and management for oil sands development
The Pembina Institute and Ecojustice call on the federal government to take immediate measures to protect Alberta from water contamination, scarcity and the loss of wetlands. According to Ecojustice counsel Karin Buss, "It is not appropriate for the Government of Canada to rely on Alberta officials to protect such a precious resource as water, especially when the province has shown little interest in proactively managing the impacts of oil sands development to date."Today, Ecojustice and the Pembina Institute will present evidence that oil sands... more
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What would you do if your well ran dry? Would you care about water then? For the millions who depend upon the Colorado River and Lake Mead that day may come sooner than they think if they do not start managing water and conserving it better. The Colorado River already no longer runs to the Gulf of Mexico. Will it take Lake Mead running dry to finally understand how important water is to our lives and what climate change combined with our wastefulness are doing to our planet?What would you do if your well ran dry? Would you care about water then? For the... more
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Water can bring peace because it is the essence of all life on Earth. While it is sad to see so many people without it, this particular action that took place in Central African Republic brings hope that people can work together for a common purpose and that change begins with us. This is what we need to do to make sure all people have clean water in a sustainable environment. It is also what we must do in regards to the climate crisis to make sure all people live in a world where resources are not exploited for profit, but a world where human rights are respected. Water is a human right.Water can bring peace because it is the essence of all life on Earth. While it is sad... more
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Only if we act to improve water use in agriculture now will we meet the acute water-environment-poverty challenges facing humankind over the next 50 years. "With earth's water, land and human resources it is possible to produce enough food for the future - but it is probable that today's food production and environmental trends will lead to crises in many parts of the world" says David Molden Deputy Director General of the International Water Management Institute.
This is the opening prognosis given in the Earthscan publication Water for Food, Water for Life: A Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture. The Assessment, the first of its kind, brings together the work of over 700 specialists from hundreds of institutes around the world into the most comprehensive and authoritative assessment of water and food ever written, critically examining policies and practices of water use and development in the agricultural sector over the last 50 years.
Spearheaded by International Water Management Institute (IWMI), one of 15 CGIAR agricultural research centres striving to increase food production, increase rural incomes, and safeguard the environment, the report is co-sponsored by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), FAO, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, and the Convention on Biological Diversity in a bid to find solutions to the challenge of balancing the water-food-environment needs.
The assessment finds that 1/3 of the world's population live in areas where water scarcity must be reckoned with. While much of this water scarcity cannot be avoided, water problems can be averted through better water management.
Growing cities take more water, and environmental concerns are rising. A water-food-environment dilemma. Water use in agriculture is recognized as one of the major drivers of ecosystem degradation, causing habitat loss, drying up of rivers, and reduction in groundwater levels. Flows in the Colorado River in USA, the Yellow River in China, the Indus in India and Pakistan - all important food producing areas - dry up because of the water needed for irrigated agriculture. Clearly limiting agricultural water use is key for environmental sustainability. Therein lies the dilemma. More people require more water for more food; more water is essential in the fight against poverty; yet we should limit the amount of water taken from ecosystems.
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Since climate change is expected to hit these areas hard, better water systems will be a key to helping people cope with dry spells. Poverty, hunger, gender inequality, and environmental degradation continue to afflict developing countries not because of technical failings but because of political and institutional failings. There is need for drastic reform in the water sector. Governments must lead the reform process, but ironically state institutions themselves are in greatest need of reform. While water scarcity is here to stay, many of the problems associated with water scarcity can be avoided.
This will require that we deal with difficult choices and tradeoffs. Reconciling competing demands on water requires informed negotiations by the many stakeholders involved in water with transparent sharing of information. "The hope is in realizing the unexplored potential that lies in better water management along with non-miraculous changes in policy and production techniques" says Margaret Catley Carleson, Chair of the Global Water Partnership, "but world leaders must take action now." As Sunita Narain, 2005 Stockholm Water Prize Winner says, "this issue must become the world's obsession."Only if we act to improve water use in agriculture now will we meet the acute... more
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A Turkish lake three times the size of Washington DC has completely vanished in 15 years. Just how much of this planet can the human race totally destroy in the next 15 years? The global water crisis is another topic that is not seen as "sexy" or newsworthy. However, it is the most crucial environmental crisis we now face. Without water we have no life. And at the current pace of population growth combined with waste and the effects of climate change, more people in all regions of this world will have no water, which means no food, no way of life, no sustainability. It is amazing to me how we keep tripping over the elephant in the room to concentrate on the peanuts.A Turkish lake three times the size of Washington DC has completely vanished in 15... more
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