I took this picture on a visit earlier this year to Ipuli, a remote, rural village in located in central Tanzania.  Ipuli, like thousands of villages, has no clean, reliable supply of drinking water.  During the dry season, which amounts to about half the year, the villagers can’t grow crops, which severely limits their food supply.  Small holes like this are the only water source for both people and their animals.

The boy in the picture is filling up a plastic bottle of muddy groundwater to take to school with him.  It’s a heartbreaking but familiar scene played every day around the world. More than 1 billion people on Earth - about one sixth of the global population - has no access to dependable, safe drinking water. Compare that to the fact that in the United States, the world’s most industrialized and sanitized nation, smart, market-savvy consumers willing pay a 1000% premium for a product that is readily available for free in their own homes, just for the convenience of drinking it out of a bottle. 

This week’s Friday Five looks at the future of water, one of the most critical issues facing humankind in the coming decade.  While some nations, such as China, will thirst under the weight of its own industrialization, other regions will literally drown from natural disasters such as tsunamis and floods. 

Virtual Water Footprint

A fabulously designed infographic poster displaying the “virtual water footprint” (the sum of the freshwater used in the production chain) of selected commodities and nations.

Choking on Growth, Part II

The second installment in this New York Times series examines China’s pollution crisis: “For three decades, water has been indispensable in sustaining the rollicking economic expansion that has made China a world power. Now, China’s galloping, often wasteful style of economic growth is pushing the country toward a water crisis. Water pollution is rampant nationwide, while water scarcity has worsened severely in north China - even as demand keeps rising everywhere.”

When the Rivers Run Dry: Water - The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century

 “Our demand for water has turned us into vampires, draining the world of its lifeblood.”  So says former New Scientist editor and author Fred Pearce in this book that outlines (in graphic detail) the looming crisis in worldwide water shortages.

Business in the World of Water - Water Scenarios to 2025

Developed by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development this report details three scenarios for the future of water built around five key drivers: people, politics, policies, past legacy systems and the planet. A lengthy but in-depth read.

Message in a Bottle

From Fast Company, one the best articles I’ve read yet on the dynamics of the bottled water industry. While the article is chock full of sobering statistics (”24% of the bottled water we buy is tap water repackaged by Coke and Pepsi” and “If you bought and drank a bottle of Evian, you could refill that bottle once a day for 10 years, 5 months, and 21 days with San Francisco tap water before that water would cost $1.35″), it also explores the growing debate around the future of “ethical” consumer choices.

(MB note: We’re usually not preachy on this blog, but today is the exception.  Bottled water represents a level of affluence and conspicuous consumption that is simply inexcusable.  My personal hope is that in the next 5 years bottled water drinkers will be as socially marginalized as cigarette smokers.   Because the fact of the matter is: we know better).