By Jenny Howell
Down to Earth
The first UN conference in 46 years specifically focused on water was held this March, aptly starting on World Water Day, March 22. Considering the climate crisis is basically a water crisis (90 per cent of climate impacts are related to water- floods, droughts or pollution); getting the world together to talk about water seems overdue.
We all learn the water cycle in Grade 2 or 3, and I enjoy seeing kids’ faces in my Water Wise classes as it dawns on them what it means. The water molecules in your body are about 4.4 billion years old, passing through each of us as part of the water cycle. They have been in rivers, oceans, glaciers, underground and likely other life forms along their journey before they temporarily become part of you (and 60 per cent of your body is water). Then you breathe, sweat and excrete out those water molecules so they can become rivers, clouds and oceans again, cycling into eternity.
We won’t run out of water on the planet as it has nowhere else to go, (OK, technically very small amounts of the hydrogen part of the water molecule can escape into space), but we can drastically change the water cycle so that it no longer supports and enables life in areas that have been inhabited for millennia.
To quote Charles Iceland, global water director at the World Resources Institute, “The water is either too much, too little or too dirty. In the water world we’ve been saying for some time now that climate change is the shark, but that water is its teeth.”
As oceans warm, much more water evaporates. At the same time, warmer air can also hold more of this water vapor. Combined, this can lead to more intense rainstorms, causing major problems like extreme flooding in coastal communities around the world, as we in B.C. have experienced.
Warmer temperatures also enhance evaporation inland; drying out soils and vegetation and lowering lake and river levels. This makes periods with low precipitation drier than they would be in cooler conditions, increasing droughts and associated risks of forest fires. Again, as we in B.C. have experienced this.
Meanwhile, warmer air temperatures are melting the worlds ice, which adds freshwater to the ocean, raising sea levels. As sea water warms it expands, adding to the problem. Projections by ‘Climate Central’ suggests up to 630 million people live in places that could be underwater by 2100. (https://www.popsci.com/story/environment/sea-level-rise-worse-than-we-thought/).
These people will all have to go somewhere, adding to the world’s geopolitical tensions as more people migrate, trying to find a better life.
Water connects us all and doesn’t recognize borders. While local, provincial and federal governments cope with the ever-increasing fallout on their populations from a changing water cycle, without global cooperation the shark’s teeth of climate change will inflict increasing damage and suffering.
For more information on Water Wise or Waste Wise and any of our school and community programs, contact the Cariboo Chilcotin Conservation Society at sustain@ccconserv.org or visit the website at www.cconserv.org
READ MORE: QUIZ: How much do you know about the Earth?
Do you have a comment about this story? email:
editor@wltribune.com
Like us on Facebook and follow us on X.
