THE STATE AND TRAJECTORY OF GLOBAL FRESH WATER: THE CASE FOR CAUTIOUS PESSIMISM

Fresh water underpins countless benefits to society and is pivotal to the success of the food and energy sectors, industry and commerce, and the expanding urban domain. It as well provides essential cultural, recreational, and aesthetic values. Water also plays a critical role in the maintenance of ecosystem services and biodiversity. Recent analyses of water systems across the planet, summarized using high resolution, geospatial indicator maps of rivers, demonstrate that a wide array of stressors combine to produce a pattern of worldwide threat to much of the freshwater resource base that sustains human water supply and aquatic biodiversity. A pervasive, globally-significant pattern of management is evident in the contemporary setting, through which impairment accumulates as a function of wealth, but is then remedied by costly, after-the-fact technological investments. This strategy of treating symptoms while leaving unabated the underlying causes is practiced widely across rich countries, but it strands poor nations and much of the world’s aquatic life at high levels of vulnerability. The seeds of such an approach to water management are hardly new and evident throughout human history. This lecture will explore the history and implications of these global realities and will focus on the role of 21st century engineering in contributing to the growing water crisis or in stimulating innovation for more effective stewardship of our water resource systems.