Water is earth’s most precious resource. We can survive without food, for days but not water ( forgot, how many days).The value of sight, hearing or anything that is essential is realised when we lose them. They are all taken for granted when we have them. I realise the value of water when I open a tap and hear a hisss…and only a hisss…
The awareness of our wasteful usage of water is pretty low compared to the challenges of climate change and depleting supplies of fuels. The harsh reality is that we will probably run out of water long before we run out of fuel.
Most people equate water consumption with what they use in their homes and places of work, but the challenge facing the globe goes much further than that. It is required not only to sustain human life, but is also immensely valuable to industry and agriculture The estimates (by a study group) says that global water requirements will grow by over 50% over the next 20 years. I cannot visualise that since I do not know how much is 900,000 billion litres (the consumption last year). If somebody can covert that into number of buckets, it may help.
The track record of water efficiency from both agriculture and industry does not inspire confidence: between 1990 and 2004 the annual rate of efficiency improvement in both was approximately only 1%. I did not look for a figure from 2004 till date.
At the moment we are coping by ‘borrowing’ water supplies from water reserved for environmental needs, an approach which will accelerate scarcity.
The cost of reaching water from its source to us is something most of us are not aware of. The pump houses, filter plants, machineries, trenches, pipes (miles and miles), meters, accessories and labour, all of them costs money.
Water found in the moon. I hope, no body gets an idea of transporting water from there.
We are often quick to trumpet our energy efficiency achievements, but too few have taken the same approach with water.
We have to understand the links between energy, food and water security, and how policies in one area affect another, to deal with the potential threat to water scarcity.
Rain water harvesting is the least we can do as individuals besides the environment protection . Do it, it is an investment with many happy returns of life
Kavitha says “save for the rainy day”.
MRadhakrishnan says cloud computing is fine in your area of development but if you don’t work on clouds for water, well….!
A village rules
Sakthidaran, the learning professor (http://sakthidaran.learningprofessor.info/blog/), has this to say:
The following declaration by a village Kasangadu,:
1. Sale of tobacco or any other intoxicating products is banned.
2. Brewing or Selling alcohol of any kind is banned.
3. Lamb husbandry is prohibited.
4. No Political Party flags are allowed to be hoisted any where in the village. However, National Flag is allowed.
5. No memorial statues are permitted to be erected.
6. Individual donors name is not written anywhere except in paper records.
“Kasangadu”, the village is under Kasangadu Panchayat, Madukkur Union, Pattukkottai Taluk, Thanjavur District, Tamil Nadu State, India
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Rajmenon's Blog 
Hello,
All I can say is “Save Water to Save Life!”
Raj
Good blog and very true.
For cities like Blore, the 1st need is to not destroy lakes, not reduce the size of existing lakes, dredge the existing lakes and not pump sewage into it.
The 2nd is to respect the fact that the water in the tap has travelled 150 kms by pipe using electricity before it reaches us.
The 3rd is to recognise that only 30% of the water being pumped out by bore well is getting recharged.
Regards
There are several ways to save water. Let us see how much water (liters) is required to produce 1 kg of the following items:
– Potatoes: 500
– Wheat: 900
– Corn: 1,400
– Rice: 1,912
– Soybeans: 2,000
– Beef: 100,275
Ref: Ecological Integrity: Integrating Environment, Conservation and Health (Island Press, Washington DC, 2001), edited by David Pimental and others.
Don’t you think that by shifting to vegetarianism, we can save water 100 times and avoid all the potential problem? Bonus: better health due to less toxins.
Jai Hind.