by Hugh Holub

Created on: February 02, 2009

The ability of individuals to ease the world water crisis is very limited due to the nature of the crisis.

The crisis has three basic elements elements:

The first aspect of the water crisis is the water is not where people need it. This is the quantity part of the problem

People have been diverting water and transporting it by canals and aqueducts for thousands of years. This has always been accomplished by large groups of people working together under some sort of management structure, whether it be a government (Rome), irrigation districts (The Salt River Project in Phoenix, Arizona), or cities with reservoirs and pipelines. We don't know, for example, what sort of management systems were used by the people in the Tigris and Euphrates valley or by the ancient Hohokam Indians in the Phoenix area, but the vastness of the irrigation canal systems makes it obvious individuals did not accomplish this.

What is clear is that there is a very strong link to water transportation systems and civilization itself.

The problem in many areas is there is not an entity with the ability to store and transport large quantities of water.

Efforts are needed in conjunction with governments at all levels, as well as the United States, the UN, the EU, wealthy Asian nations, as well as other entities to create the ability to accomplish this in areas which lack a supply of water.

The second aspect of the water crisis is water quality. For millions and millions of people, the quality of the water available to them is a serious health problem.

In the first world nations, this problem was solved by a combination of stringent governmental regulation over water quality, and public funding of potable water systems which protected water quality.

In many parts of the world there are not governmental entities with the resources to provide potable water. This is where grants from rich nations to poorer nations are vital.

We spend far more on military assistance to other nations than we do in the United States on assuring people have safe drinking water. The US could make a lot more friends in the world by providing water treatment plants instead of bombs.

The water quality problem is the most amenable to more local solutions, with small level technologies available to treat water. But, again the problem is lack of funds and an institutional framework to make this happen.

The third aspect of the water crisis is affordability. In many cases water is being made available, but it is too expensive for the users,

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