WATER SECURITY
A - Comparative water performance (productivity and resilience)
B - Water use in food processing
C - Water for food and nutrition security in urban and peri-urban contexts
D - Water governance, policies and management
E - Role of water for food security and nutrition
WATER is “ a resource under increasing stresses…”
Preliminary statements at INTRODUCTION:
Water performance , comparative or other, is worthy of an effort of definition. While productivity is a common shared defined, resilience is not. Per se the definition stated in Wikipedia (In ecology, resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to respond to a perturbation or disturbance by resisting damage and recovering quickly) is not a direct quality aspect of water, but water in fact takes part active or passive to a varied number of ecological events and aspects.
The term resilience is tipical of science’s properties of materials, where a resilient materiali is nearer to a tough material and the definition of resilience is much an effect of intimate energy and resistance of a material based on molecular structure and its potential to resist to external stresses.
Without entering the debate, the interpretation appears to cause most common doubts of understanding the useful use of the term.
AgoraAmbrosiana suggest a revision of use of the term “resilience” and “resilient” in reference to the word “water”, that should also make a difference in its “molecular state” (altready providing a complex material per se, with effects of states, aggregation and resistance to disturbances not only determined by pressure and temperature, also derived by micro.impurity determine by other materials in contact, from air – to any other surface.
Please take care of use of: “Increasing pollution in many parts of the world from both agriculture and industry are rendering water unfit for use and impacting on human and ecosystem health.” The diffused “Unsustainable resource management is reducing ecosystem functions and services”, but new important examples of complete recovery of edible water have been gained in small quantities at use of Astronauts in ISS orbit and in large industrialized processes by NESTLE and by the facilities operating in Milano at the “DEPURATORE of NOSEDO”, providing a final top quality standard for SPACE USE.
NO REFERENCE IS CONTAINED IN THE DOCUMENT - SAVE ONE BIBLIOGRAPHIC CITATION - FOR NESTLE (The case of Nestlé, Bunge and Cargill. Water Alternatives 5(3): 619-
47 635) none for SATELLITE observations, nor SPACE or ASTRO or ISS (intenrantional spatial station).
AgoraAmbrosiana draft issue of a plan of debate theme contains references updated up to 2012 while the results cited above are derived from information obtained months ago from NESTLE and from the top management of DEPURATORE DI NOSEDO. Both provided relevant information… with poor “echo” in the mass media.
The chapter of interest of the PRESENT DRAFT VO (in addition to INTRODUCTION) is like to be chapter “2.3 Water re-use - 2.3.1 Dealing with wastewater and marginal quality water – Urban agriculture – 2.3.2 Dealing with Desalination COULD be updated with ongoing projects and applications which are operating in the Arabian Gulf.
Chapter 1.3.4 Water and energy linkages provides a short info on the new important and popular source of energy as is “shale gas and oil” which interfere largely with water contamination and recovery processes, while on the site of energy sources no mention is made to tidal energy, sea wave energy that are at the industrialization phase in many spots of the Globe.
Similar inclusion of future availability of innovative resources and usages shall be discussed and debated as it is during the last five years in US, where a large open debate is ongoing in reference to the large industrial exploitations of shale gas and the definition of the law and regulations. The approach is made STATE BY STATE with non uniform trend statements.
3.1 Local water governance regimes: accessing water for FSN should take in a proper focus the subsequent points of 3.1.1 Multiple ways to allocate and access water, as each exploitation is open to family exploitation of shale gas or oil well or of wide grids of fields for industrial operation. The state of the debates and regulations at work in a continuous challenge versus other socio political pressures. Europe is far back on this theme and at present Poland appears as the most advanced among the European states.
Similar issues shall become valid also for 3.2 Water reform processes (3.2.1 From New Delhi to Dublin, 3.2.2 Water reform processes and Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM).
The present state of the draft VO is hereafter quoted and could be given more emphasis as future tag of more specific rules and definition of impact to the resource of water/energy needs which must adapt to local territories situation.
“Moreover the increasing use of the drilling practice of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," as it is more commonly known, raises concerns on its impact on water resources. Most studies of the impacts of fracking on water have focused on water quality, but some studies have also looked that impacts on water quantity and competition for use with other sectors, including the agricultural sector. There has been little quantification of the actual water use because requirements are dependent on the nature of the shale, well depth, the number of fracking stages and the length of the lateral pipes underground (Nicot & Scanlon 2012). Frac sand mining— an off shoot of hydrofracking industry—is a related sector whose impact of food systems is yet to be assessed as well.”
My limited appreciation of the new scenario is edited in two articles in Italian in PLAST, ex Reed Business Information Italy magazine (now acquired by EDB Italia, who continue the editions) under my authorship.
The regularly ongoing of special contribution provided by NESTLE to water experts and organizations is daily part of the accessible documents at the corporation home sub title “Creating share values”.
Vincenzo Lo Scalzo