Managing water resources in Australia is essential in every community. In the world, water exists in liquid, solid and vapour forms. The hydrological cycle fixes the water supply to the universe. However, the available water to human beings in fresh form – from rivers, ground and lakes – is limited to about 0.3% of the total water supply. Most of this water is not accessible or is expensive to get because of heavy pollution or being in remote areas. Estimates suggest that only about 0.003% of the total water on earth is available for human use. However, this amount should be enough for the human population even if we reach 8 billion people.
The only problem with the availability of water is the uneven distribution. In many places, the rainfall on which clean water replenishment depends on is uneven.
The major problem of resources for water
The first major problem of resources for water is the rising demand for water for industrial use and irrigation besides domestic use. Another major problem is the highly skewed water distribution on earth and water pollution.
As a result, a lot of regions in the world are overusing water such that more water will be withdrawn instead of being replenished by annual runoff. A lot of areas in the world have a water shortage. Some of the examples of such places include Spain, southern Italy, Greece, India, most Arab states, Northwestern and Southeastern Africa, Mexico, Peruvian Coast, Taiwan, Japan, and the Southeastern United States. Currently, the groundwater tables are falling at a fast rate and that is why we need effective water resources management in Australia.
Polluted water is dangerous especially for developing countries as it is a great cause of communicable diseases. Third world countries also suffer because they don’t have the money to build water storage systems and water distribution systems to reach all the people. It has been predicted that the next major war will be over water and not over oil. What we need now is to manage resources for water using the following methods.
Increasing supply
Diverting water from areas where it is excess to areas where it is scarce through artificially recharging groundwater, link waterways, desalinizing seawater, controlling pollution, towing icebergs from the Antarctic regions to water scarcity regions, cloud seeding, reclaiming polluted water through recycling and more.
Reducing degradation
It is necessary to devise methods to control and reduce evaporation losses in irrigation. Better drainage methods can also be used to reduce soil salinization.
Reducing use and waste
Limiting the growth of population in areas that have a water shortage, coming up with efficient industrial processes with less water use and controlling wastage are some of the ways of managing resources for water.
However, some of these methods of managing water resources in Australia come with their own problems. For example, dams have gone through a lot of criticism for changing the morphology of river banks, beds coastlines and estuary through altered sediment load. Huge dams also lead to large scale displacement of people. Diversion of water is very expensive and has serious ecological effects.
