by Aruni de Silva on August 18, 1997
(Aruni de Silva, a student in the Environment and Resource Management program at the University of Toronto, researched and wrote this paper to fulfill the requirements of the Professional Experience Course offered by the university’s Innis College.)
Introduction
Water, the most highly demanded resource on earth, is unequally distributed around the globe. North America exemplifies the imbalance. Canada, with 0.5 percent of the world’s population, is blessed with 9 percent of the globe’s fresh, renewable water. The United States, home to 4.7 percent of the world’s population, has 1 percent of its water. With the exception of the prairie farmers, who have suffered periodic droughts, Canadians have experienced few severe water shortages. Our southern neighbours, in contrast, especially those living in the southwestern United States, have experienced acute water shortages. Canada’s water advantage has inspired a number of proposals for large scale water exports from Canada to the United States. Most such exports, requiring massive interbasin transfers, would dramatically alter the flows and levels of Canada’s inland waters, disrupting delicately balanced ecologies. As a result, the livelihoods of those who depend on those waters would also be adversely affected.
The United States
The western United States, the nation’s fastest growing region, has been dealt a poor share of the world’s fresh water. California, for example, does not receive much precipitation over the year, and the precipitation it does receive falls within one season. Nevada has virtually no rain at all, and the little that does fall is lost as there is no adequate soil to capture and use the precipitation. Lakes and rivers are minimal throughout the West.
The lack of a sufficient natural supply of fresh water together with natural droughts and floods, poor pricing policies and poor water management have resulted in severe fresh water shortages during the past thirty years. The threat of global warming increases anxiety over the US water supply in the future.
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