Look at this world, at our history and our future, and think of it in terms of water. Suspend your doubt, your awkwardness at such a strange idea, and imagine things in relation to the rain, the rivers and the wells. I want you to entertain the thought that water might be the most important substance known to man.
Really this shouldn’t be hard: three days without it will kill you. But that’s remote given our habit of sipping away constantly at a bottle of water. We wash with water, use it to grow our food, make our clothes and an endless list of other 'stuff'. It is vital, not just as the drink on the table but also as the ingredient of most 'things' we depend upon. Celebrating the centrality—the necessity—of water should be obvious. But it isn’t.
We don’t think of our world as 'watery'. We rate oil and fuel above it, and the digital revolution as the defining manner of the age. Before water we think of social organisation, global trade, personal security and career ambition. Water rarely gets a mention. This is a pity and a mistake.
The grand theory—one that would combine all the forces of nature within one framework—is out of fashion. Physicists and mathematicians may look for the Grand Unified Theory, but most of academic and intellectual enquiry has burrowed into ever-smaller crannies; specialisation is the thing. We know massive amounts about the detail, but shy away from the bigger picture. So, you are going to be sceptical when I suggest that water unites us over time and place like few other things.
The first sustainable cities occurred in southern Iraq, a region known as Mesopotamia by archaeologists. It was in places like Ur that the fundamentals of civilisation began. Here monumental architecture, urban living, the emergence of a trade class not working in the fields, and law begins to happen. We also get writing, bureaucracy, money and political organisation. Similar developments occur elsewhere; on the Indus or the Yangtze rivers, irrigation ditches nurture not just food but the business of civilised living.
Given the firm embrace between civilisation and water, it comes as no surprise that this is a doomed relationship. In pursuit of human glory we have drained parts of the world nearly dry. This is 'peak water': when the extraction of underground water and river runoff exceeds what nature can replenish. Our relationship with water was bound to end badly: we couldn’t bring ourselves to drink at a slower pace, to consider the beauty of the stuff. We were greedy for its bounty.
No sooner than the Mesopotamians had mastered the irrigation ditch and the surplus food produced as a result, they were designing fountains and frivolous gardens. The flow of water seems to lure people into decadence. This was certainly the view of the early Christians. God was clear that the blood red Nile was a current of sin; if people were to be saved they had to leave Egypt and go to the cool clear Jordan. The habits of watery cities like Babylon were to be shunned and water rituals were seen as heathen. That was the idea, but the appeal of the current was stronger than that, and baptism was accepted as a core element of the Church’s practice.
The Romans revelled in the surplus flow that burbled through the aqueduct channel, inventing great examples of aqua-drama by having the water gush over statues and facades. The bath was the defining luxury of a Rome which convinced itself that dirt was intrinsically barbarian. These structures and ideas were revived in the Renaissance when the city again directed water to any number of entertainments. To be wet was to be rich and superior.
Water took a new turn when northern Europe started its stride towards global dominance. The problem here, unlike with early civilisations, was that there was a natural excess of it. Simply having water was no mark of power or wit – it was everywhere. Instead, power came to those who knew how to dam and drain. Engineers tasked with getting dry land to emerge from the bog invented the landscapes of England, the Netherlands and Germany.
In the process, systems of agriculture and industry developed and were all highly water intensive. As these seemed to be the pillars of a successful modern economy, they were copied across the world by nations wanting to catch-up with the power and pomp of Europe. In fact, we can see a common element running through the history of civilisation - that to control water was to set the conditions for progress. The assumption throughout was that the water would always follow man, and would never run out.
This assumption, however, has been exposed as wrong. Apply water intensive agriculture and industry to central India, southern China and southern Africa and you get a natural disaster. 'Peak water' occurs as aquifers are sucked dry of their bounty so that farms can grow more cotton and factories produce more 'stuff'. The United Nations reckons 2 billion people will live in water-stressed areas by 2035. With global population projected to reach 9 billion by 2050, there is the ever likelihood that up to 25 percent of the planet will gag with thirst within decades.
The consequence of this could be catastrophic. When water runs outs life becomes desperate within hours. A shortage of water will affect crop yields and industrial output—people will be thirsty, hungry and out of work. Social unrest and conflict will become more likely, as well as provoking great movements of people as they flock towards the water.
The assumption is that we will find a technological solution to this. The response to 'peak oil' is to drill more wells, explore new regions and cut consumption. While we can all waste less water, there is no easy techno-fix to this problem. Oil can be piped and shipped from the seabed to your local petrol station; water cannot. To distribute water from, say, Loch Lomond to the south east of England in sufficient quantities would require an infrastructure so huge and expensive, with such a large carbon footprint, it may cause more damage than it cures.
History is littered with water dreams flooding into nightmare. Irrigation that salts up and ruins crops, canals which flow too fast or not enough, and dams that ruin ecosystems are some of the more obvious mistakes. The fact is that water movement on scale to meet modern thirst has never been tried.
Given that civilisation emerged, in part, from the control of water, we must ask ourselves if we will still be civilised when the water is less plentiful. Probably not. This model of living, with its vast consumption sucking at the earth’s water cannot continue. We will have to drink less.
This isn’t a problem for the dry world alone. People in Scotland, Sweden and Canada will also suffer—the supermarket shelves of Edinburgh will be empty if the water fails in western USA or southern Africa. Nor is this just a far-away matter of which we care little. The water supply in southern Spain, Italy and Greece is turning into a trickle—the immigrants knocking on our door will be EU members.
Apocalypse seems to be the default mode for environmental warnings, and all is not lost. We can find social, economic and technical solutions to some of this, but first we must accept that our world is water. We must change our view of how things are, and allow water to take centre stage in our thinking. Look around you and imagine what things would be like without water. Now, act to ensure that will never happen.
The Copenhagen summit on the environment is happening this December. The noise of failure is hissing out of the event like a bouncy castle that’s been knifed. We need action from this gathering. Choosing not to buy water-intensive produce from arid regions can also have a big effect. Meat from western USA, vegetables from southern Africa and cotton from Pakistan are having a direct negative effect on the water supply in those regions.
But perhaps the most profound effect we can have as individuals is to accept that our current model of civilisation doesn’t have the water to sustain it – whatever the future looks like, it will be substantially different to now.