WATER

Problems analysis: Water in crisis

    The Earth’s hydrosphere consists of lakes, subterranean waters and the oceans, which cover the biggest part of its surface and since memorable time, human have been using and exploring the aquatic ecosystems of the world, that can be found in its hydrosphere. It is estimated that from the waters that exist in our planet, 99% are not available for use, because 97% are salty and are at the oceans and 2% in the glaciers, what make them unprofitable. The rest, only 1%, is that constitute sweet water.
    In Brazil we have got about 8% of all the water from the Earth’s surface, being 80% of this volume at the Amazonian Region, what shows us the importance of our country in the hydric question, even more if we are remembered that the water’s shortage reaches 40% of the worldwide population, lacking constantly this resource in 22 countries. Besides, there is still a preoccupation of the specialists that the lack of water would be the big cause for wars in the next centuries.
    Since Antiquity, on the edge of rivers, lakes and the sea, cities have been developing themselves and have been living of the exploring of the hydrical resources’ riches, as for example São Paulo on the edge of Tietê River, London and Tamisa River, Paris and Sena River and Rio de Janeiro on the edge of the sea, in a way that the sweet and salty aquatic complexes always have been offering food and surviving conditions to human.
    Water has different utilities for men as, for example, for: agriculture irrigation, industry, domestic use, fishing, electrical energy generation, attracting tourism, and as work manager in the infrastructure of its distribution. Moreover, not for saying that rivers are important travelling resources, and cannot be forgotten as economical development factor, by this reason.
    So, hydric ecosystems are so important that without them there would not exist life as we know; and that is the reason why the study of waters is important and mainly because its biodiversity is one of the less known, remembering that just at Amazonian River there is cataloged more than 2.000 fishes’ species and there still are a lot to know about.
    The demographic human explosion has been liberating in its activities the dejects spilling, and toxically substances for the environment, polluting, mainly the worldwide hydrical resources, making them without life, because of the plankton destruction. Referring to the rivers, pollution problem is serious, because its waters move, draining in big rivers, carrying the polluters elements to hundreds or thousands of kilometers from where they were thrown away, this way polluting big distances and a lot of times pollution arrives to the sea, because big hydrographic bowls finish at the ocean. Referring to the lakes and swamps of sweet water, the problem is more critical because these ecosystems form closed habitat or island habitat, in a way that the continuous pollution get accumulated up the end of life, because there is not a possibility of big scale recuperation. Besides, we have to observe that exactly at these isolated ecosystems that we can find that kind of species that are found just in that place, increasing the importance of the environment’s maintenance.
    Therefore, pollution decreasing related the to human race expansion that is already about 6 billion people and a projection to 2.020 of 14 billion people, as its industries, has been drastically affecting worldwide hydrical resources, besides, big rivers were cut off in its ways by hydroelectrics’ formation, being prejudicial to the natural biological flow of a lot of fishes’ species, extincting them from the region with enormous ecological lost, everything in pro of “development”. Besides, as it was said by the Worldwatch Institute, in each one of the mainly areas of water use, as agriculture, industry and cities, the demands have been quickly increasing and from 1950 up now, the global use of water more than triplicated.
    The coaster ecosystems as swamps, marsh areas, coral reeves and estuaries are damaged by the marine water pollution. According to data from the United Nation Program for the Environment, more than a half of the inhabitants of the world live about 60 km from the coasts, what provides the dejects flow directly to the coasters regions. Despite of the existence of the Sea’s Right Convention, realized in 1982, where the nations agreed in preserving the marine space and the Worldwide Program of Action for Marine Areas Protection, adopted by 109 governors in November/95, Washington D.C., USA, the problems of pollution in these areas are still increasing and, finally, the conclusion is that just the change of our habits through environmental education and the decreasing of contamination’s flows is that the situation change will be possible.
    Therefore, the hydrical environment degradation has been having big proportions, decreasing the resources of this nature, and making them scarce, showing a water crisis.
    This makes necessary the found of ways to decrease its consume, as for avoiding waste and also provides economical resources for its maintenance. One of the ways is exactly charging for its use, appearing the “user-payer”, that is related to the polluter-payer.