The disappearing water.

The water available for drinking on the earth is about  40 per cent less than it was 30 years ago, and in 2020 three billion people will be without it. But the most powerful states are already exploiting the situation to turn this resource into marketable goods.

The planet has been short of this precious commodity and, strangely enough, we have become aware of it too late.

Under the pressure of the demographic growth, and due to pollution, the water resources available for each person in the last 30 years have been reduced about 40 per cent. 

Scientists warn, that by around 2020, when there will be about 8 billion people on the planet, only about 5 billion will have access to drinkable water. Up to now the solutions suggested to face the problem have concerned improvement of the supply, instead of containing the demand, this approach is very wasteful and only serves to compound the problem.  

For example,  big dams are at the centre of the debate due to the high human and environmental costs and associated ecological consequences; desalination, moreover is economically prohibitive, not least due to the enormous amont of energy which the process requires. These, and other strategies aimed at improving supply whilst failing to address over-consumption, fail to address the complex ecosystem of the water cycle.

Due to these technical failures and a lack of strategic planning, the catastrophic predictions increase the risk that the Wars of the Water  will break out amongst those who need access to "the blue gold" of the 21st century. 

"Whisky is for drinking, water for fighting", observed Mark Twain, and the thesis of international observers, political figures and strategic experts seem to confirm this reflection.

If these timely warnings on the state of water resources of the planet are not heeded,  then most experts believe that the wars of the 21st century will explode due to disputes over access to the water.

The idea of the Water Wars certainly captures the imagination and it should provoke the collective anxiety of public opinion, due to the central - and even the sacred position - that water occupies in many societies and cultures.

Yet this argument, presented exclusively within the terms of an increasing shortfall in supply  - and the consequent risk of armed conflicts - may produce purely superficial and short-term solutions. Moreover, it tends to present the current situation as immutable, even apocalyptic, without examining the real causes which have brought the planet to the edge calamity through water shortages. Few acknowledge that one-third of humanity doesn't have access to drinkable water whilst  many of the shortages elsewhere are due to the over-consumption in the developed world. 

Currently, throughout the world, there are about 50 conflicts between nations over the access, the use and the ownership of water resources. Significantly, the area in which the "water stress" is threatening to transform itself at any moment into an armed conflict, is the Middle East, where the climate and the water-reserves are the least plentiful on the planet.

So water has been transformed, at this time, into a strategic object to strike the enemy, to weaken him, through a form of blackmail that will guarantee regional supremacy. 

It's clear that in this contest, the proposal to consider water to be a key economic, strategic resource assigning to it a price which reflects its scarcity, does not bode well for interntaional peace and cooperation. 

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Prophecies

Books on a prophetic work risen in Assisi more than thirty years ago, that will involve the world.