World gears up to water shortages

Earlier this year, Sydney officially opened its new water desalination plant, the largest so far in Australia and driven by renewable wind power. It is the third to open in the country but will soon be overtaken by further new desalination plants. Australia's response to the growing demand for water and the increasing scarcity and unpredictability of conventional supplies is being echoed around the globe. 'Water manufacturing' — desalination and recycling — is booming in the face of soaring demand and overstretched natural sources in many regions and the threat that climate change may further exacerbate supplies. A recent report said that there was a record increase in desalination and re-use of sewage last year. Desalination used to be mostly confined to cruise ships and Gulf states with plentiful cheap energy needed to remove the salt. The rise in water manufacturing reached a record high of 9.5 million cubic metres per day, according to the analysts Global Water Intelligence (GWI), reported in the Guardian. This amounts to 10 per cent of global water use. The processes are occurring in some of the poorest countries, such as Algeria and Ghana, News focus and in others such as India where demand is growing rapidly. Also cities in the developed world such as London are also investing in new manufacturing technology. " People do desalination when they run out of opportunities, and the problem is the world overall is running out of opportunities: groundwater is overexploited to the extent it's becoming saline and unusable; rivers are being drained; new dams are becoming less and less viable and long-distance transfer is expensive and controversial, " the report said. The fundamental reason for the rise of water manufacturing is a simple gap between supply and demand: in 2006 a report from the International Water Management Institute found one in three of the world's population Desalination and reuse of water is booming as demand soars, but there are environmental worries about these developments. Nigel Williams reports. Booming: Sydney's new desalination plant will soon be superceded by further desalination plants. (Photo: Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images.)