Education Study And Research For The Exploitation Of The Oceans Eco-friendly
Water resources and management
Water is a very abundant resource on Earth, but much of it is not readily available for human uses. Water present in the oceans and surface waters, a small portion is set in motion by solar energy through evaporation and participate in the water cycle, falling back to the ground. Most of the latter rate is not the water resource as it evaporates again from the ground or is intercepted by vegetation, or flows into the sea in a short time and is therefore not available continuously during the year. The water rushed down, which is stored in layers of permeable soils, which are slowing down the outflow to the sea, represents the water resource potentially available continuously for anthropogenic uses. This amount is for Italy 7% of rainfall, and is divided into resource available (2.5%) that is the one that emerges spontaneously springs and gives life to the waterways, and resource potential (4.5%) that remains in the ground water and is potentially emungibile through wells.
The uses of the resource vary widely from country to country in relation to the prevailing productive activities. For Italy, the main uses are as irrigation (45%), industrial (20%), energy (15%) and of course the drinking water (20%), that is, the water used for domestic purposes. The demand for drinking water, 200 liters / inhabitant / day, including human consumption (10%), personal care (30%), flushing the toilet (30%) and other domestic purposes (30%), such as dishwashers, washing, watering gardens, and so on.
The evolution of water management a known historical fact that the first human settlements have sprung up in the vicinity of springs and rivers, and the first civilizations were born organized around the rivers primarily to the need to organize collectively manage the water resources: as in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, the need for channeling of river water.
The construction of aqueducts gravity, introduced to Europe by the Romans, made it possible to remove the urban settlement from the primary sources of water. The water was transported through open channels and conveyed in tanks from which it was lifted manually with buckets or hydraulic pumps started to arms; water systems of this type remained in operation up to 800. The development of metallurgy in the nineteenth century allowed the construction of aqueducts in pressure, which convey the water to the interior of closed conduits, preserving the gravitational potential energy in the form of pressure and thus allowing to carry the water even uphill and then up at home. This represents an improvement from the point of view of hygiene, as the previous system could easily determine the contamination of water adducted with the waste water.
Of course, the construction of aqueducts in pressure could only take place thanks to funding from large private investors (eg. Banks), and therefore the first aqueducts were built in large urban centers, where it was predictable return on investment, such as in the city of London, where the aqueduct was built in pressure nel1854. In the thirties of the twentieth century, however, there is a widespread awareness of the strategic importance of the water resource and the properties of the waters became public.
Similarly, during the same period, there is a widespread awareness of the need to ensure universal access to water services, for hygienic reasons and humanitarian, with the objective that is to bring water to all the houses, which the market alone is not able to achieve, as the initial cost of the infrastructure is very high and the price that the investor should require to return from the investment made would not meet the willingness to pay of potential users, for which it would be most cost walk to the water source. For the infrastructure costs, are then added operating costs due to maintenance, energy expenditure for the lifting and the removal of waste water and the required treatment, costs that in many contexts not urban were not sustainable.
In Europe, it has been nearly complete, over the last fifty years, the goal of connection to the water supply of the entire population, only thanks to the intervention of the state capital, and with the help of the Marshall Plan in the second post-war period. In developing countries, in the absence of public economic resources, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development to finance water infrastructure projects having as a constraint on economic payback through their management. These investments are often unsuccessful, since in these countries the majority of the population can not pay the rates provided and the infrastructure is made available only to the wealthy, often encountering protests from the population. Several movements in civil society in these countries claim the right to water as one of the fundamental human rights, turning against private companies, such as the French Vivendi, Suez and Saur and the German RWE / Thames Water.
An example is what happened in Bolivia, where in 1999 the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development imposed the privatization of the water supply to the city of Cochabamba as a condition for a loan of $ 25 million. As a result of privatization has been an increase in rates up to 400%, for an average wage of a Bolivian of 20%. This situation led in 2000 to the violent clashes in the streets and public control of water services nationwide.
Similarly, there have been major figures who have made the case for a new Marshall Plan to finance public capital infrastructure in the developing countries. The realization of this goal, which would require a greater financial effort on the part of rich countries, encounters obstacles by similar movements of civil society in these countries, which are struggling to obtain the free of water service at home.
The scarcity of drinking water
Water supply in a village in Tanzania. Unlike other goods of primary importance, such as oil or copper grain, water is not replaceable in the majority of its uses, and is not cost-effective its transportation at distances greater than a few hundred kilometers. Because of the growth of human activities, the availability of drinking water per person is decreasing. The increasingly widespread denial of the right to water has dire consequences. At the beginning of the third millennium, it was estimated that over one billion people had no access to clean water and that 40% of the world population could not afford the luxury of fresh water for minimal hygiene.
As a result, in 2006, thirty thousand people died every day in the world were due to the lack of water.
In addition, the UNESCO World Water Development Report in 2003 clearly indicates that in the next twenty years, the amount of water available per person will decrease by 30%. For this reason, water is a strategic resource for many countries. Ismail Serageldin Vice President of the World Bank in 1995 stated: “If the wars of the twentieth century were fought over oil, as will those of the twenty-first bone of contention water.”
To date, many people have been involved in a long succession of conflicts, armed and policy makers to access to water. Tensions govern diplomatic relations because of some control over aquifers. From the Indo-Pakistani conflict in Punjab to Turkey in 1989, the then Prime Minister Turgut Ozal threatened to cut off water supplies to Syria if he had expelled the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). From conflict to the waters of the Nile between Egypt and Ethiopia hydro-jihad launched by the nomadic peoples of the Tigris and Euphrates river against the huge project of Saddam Hussein.
Apartheid in the Middle East to the detriment of the Palestinian water feeds the conflict with Israel has occupied since 1967, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, and after having occupied from 1982 to 2000 the so-called “security zone” in southern Lebanon, it is still this area of southern Lebanon called “Shebaa farms”, through which pass the Wazzani and Hasbani rivers that feed the Jordan River. Jordan, in turn, feeds the Sea of Galilee main source of fresh water to Israel and Jordan.
The debate on solutions
Irrigation system on a cotton plantation. The problem of decreasing water reserves has three possible options:
- a marked increase in production
- a better distribution
- less waste
Clean water is listed as the oil of the future. Fresh water is now more valuable than ever to its extensive use in agriculture in high-tech manufacturing and the production of hydroelectric energy is slowly gaining the attention of people for a more intelligent and sustainable use.
The salt water is not suitable for any of the above applications. The salt removes the fertility of the soil, preventing subsequent crops; crusting turbines and the blades of a central, and in general the mechanical components of a manufacturing industry.
The sea water is present in an amount almost infinite on Earth, and could permanently solve the problem of drought in the world, if it were possible to obtain fresh water. The technique of desalination most widely used and least expensive, at the time, using reverse osmosis, but it is wasteful from the point of view of energy (6 kWh / m³ of water). Among the hypotheses discussed, it is thought the use of nuclear reactors for power plants, or to a eolicooff-shore in which the blades off in the sea provide the energy that serves to desalinazzatori below to purify the water and pumping it up the coast.
Israel is a country pioneer in the treatment of waste water and marine, and reached a percentage of 13% of the domestic water needs met by desalination. The cost per cubic meter of desalinated water has dropped below 57 euro cents, becoming competitive with that of fresh water pumped directly to the final users.
Ashkelon south of Tel Aviv, is the largest desalination plant in the world with a capacity of 100 million cubic meters of drinking water per year. The sea water is pumped inside of 3000 cartridges each containing 37 m² of membrane, at a pressure of 72 bar, with which half the water becomes soft and drinking yielding its salt content of the remaining 50% of that falls into the sea with a salinity doubled.
The governments of many countries have planned to distribute water to the needy for free. Others argue that the market mechanism and free private enterprise is the most appropriate management of this valuable resource and funding for the construction of wells, tanks and dams. Those opposed to the privatization fear that this will bring about sharp increases in prices. Water, like other products or services essential to life, it is good to question poorly elastic with respect to price changes, and thus allowing for free updates. The comparison with an indirect product and market as widespread as that of mineral water, which cost a multiple of tap water, suggests that the public would accept significant price changes, which are already paying for buying bottled water.
An argument led by supporters of the privatization of the water, is that management would not publish efficiency in production, distribution and use of fresh water: the rarity of good and the price even higher, taking into account its real value should lead consumers to save water, competition between water companies, to obtain exclusive management in a given territory, through a regulatory framework and sure returns, and specific requirements in this regard to calls for tenders, should encourage long-term investments, push the modernization of facilities and the reduction of losses in water systems. Tenders annual representing an element of uncertainty and disincentives for investments that have repayment time consuming. In contrast, ten-year concessions would go from a public monopoly to a private one, much more expensive for citizens. In support of this thesis, is worth saying that water is a natural monopoly and water infrastructure costs are not replicable, at least in the medium to long term, pianificandosi large investments with a time horizon of thirty years of repayment. The timing of repayment can be shortened course, but reformulating up rates for the users.
Opponents argue that without a law on universal service and water required to include in the notices clause to protect the shopping disadvantaged and the poor, is not a guarantee to all citizens the full enjoyment of sustained an essential service to the life. The private sector could disrupt supplies to customers less affluent who do not pay, or choose not to serve a location, because the revenues do not cover operating costs. The optimum areas would cease to exist and with it any possibility of government price controls, not being able to antitrust law any public authority to impose administrative prices to private parties.
The regulations do not provide for the creation of an authority National Water as already exist for other essential services and general economic importance, such as telecommunications, gas and electricity. The authority would be the only public body with powers to impose a ceiling of reference tariffs for water; ensure effective competition in a market run by local monopolies, which may have lasted more than a year depending on the regulatory framework; the definition of a minimum universal service to be provided to everyone, everywhere, a salary range subsidized or fully exempt whose bills are financed by customers in the highest income; give a fair compensation to local governments for the exclusive concession of the service, and to the communities where there are aqueducts to exploit “non-drinking” spring of their resources, for the amount of water withdrawn for consumption or for industrial use of agricultural products which does not benefit the local area. The Constitution provides that the Republic of eliminating obstacles to the full realization of the person (art. 3) and, further, that the mountain communities are fairly compensated for the use of resources.
There is also no regulations governing conflicts of interest that prohibits producers of mineral water control companies providing water services. In such cases, the manufacturer may degrade water quality and continuity of service or increase fares above the price of bottled water. The Italian legislation, in particular, does not say that water is a public property because it originates and flows of public land, and as such is owned by the state. To assert public ownership of water means that anyone from profiting from the operation of the service, possibly as owners of the aqueducts, is required to pay a fee for the resources it consumes
To the contrary, private management is not even synonymous with efficiency, at least from the consumer. By their nature tend to make favorable conditions for agricultural and industrial customers, affecting a high percentage of their turnover; with a view to profit, and given the bargaining power of the major users of water resources, it is likely to adopt pricing schemes that provide quantity discounts, and thereby discourage saving by rewarding the biggest consumers of water resources.
80% of fresh water is used for agriculture for irrigation and industry, while only a small portion serving civil users. But traditional technologies in agriculture generate a tremendous waste: in the heat, most of the water for irrigation of open areas, evaporates. The conventional systems also do not detect the soil moisture, and if it is saturated to its absorption capacity, beyond which the irrigated water evaporates or is lost in the surface without feed crops, the percentage of waste is very high. By micro irrigation systems are a technology that allows you to break down a few orders of magnitude water consumption in agriculture, especially if integrated with channels for underground irrigation, taking water directly to plant roots, preventing evaporation losses and the dispersion in the soil. In addition to water, there's micronutirienti and phosphates, reducing the risk of pollution of land and the cost of fertilizer.
Even in the case of industry, there is room for efficiency through sewage treatment and reuse of wastewater in the same industrial or irrigation, limiting the emission of pollutants in aquifers from which drinking water is drawn. Some additional sources of water saving are represented by the collection of rain water in special tanks in particular for irrigation, by the use of condensed water obtained by dehumidifiers or other systems capable for example of obtaining fresh water by condensation of the mist.
In the Foundation are, as in any other sector, technicians and specialists for the study and research of the oceans and waters for the use eco-friendly, and in a way that ensures any project the right expertise and the right penalty.
Dr. Enrique De La Caridad Angulo Borrero
