Good News from the United Nations

This story has been reported by several news channels in the last few days, but it's worth repeating.

The UN has reached one of the millennium development goals ahead of schedule. Goal number 7 is to "Ensure environmental sustainability." Within that goal, target 7C is to "Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation". That's the one that's been achieved. As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says, "The successful efforts to provide greater access to drinking water are a testament to all who see the MDGs not as a dream, but as a vital tool for improving the lives of millions of the poorest people.”

Read more here.

The Three Paradoxes that Obstruct Water Conservation, and How We Can Resolve Them through H2Ownership

Here's part 4 of the series on water conservation by global expert James Workman, pictured here.

James Workman is author of Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought. He is a visiting professor at Wesleyan University’s College of the Environment and co-founder of SmartMarkets LLC, an online utility-based platform that unlocks equitable water and energy markets for cities using the system that has sustained the Kalahari’s indigenous people for 30,000 years.

IV. Resolving the 3 Paradoxes of Water Conservation:
Forget virtue, durable conservation must tap human vice

In April 2001, US Vice-President Dick Cheney famously trashed the idea of doing more with less: “Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue,” he said, “but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.”

It pains my liberal conscience to admit it, but ten years later it seems he’s right. To save water and energy and build deep-seated resilience from the grassroots level up, cities need to start tapping into a far deeper human instinct: avarice.

Yes, yes. I know that sounds rather crass, even for me, but hear me out.

We can agree that climate mitigation demands clean energy; likewise climate adaptation demands efficient water use. Building on that, we all know that water and energy conservation remains by far the fairest, fastest, cheapest and cleanest route to global security. It restores a resilient society, a stable climate, an autonomous foreign policy and a robust economy while avoiding political land mines of regulations, carbon taxes or cap-and-trade treaties.

The Three Paradoxes that Obstruct Water Conservation, and How We Can Resolve Them through H2Ownership

Here's part 3 of the series on water conservation by global expert James Workman, pictured here.

Last installment: next Friday!

James Workman is author of Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought. He is a visiting professor at Wesleyan University’s College of the Environment and co-founder of SmartMarkets LLC, an online utility-based platform that unlocks equitable water and energy markets for cities using the system that has sustained the Kalahari’s indigenous people for 30,000 years.

III. The Third Paradox of Water Conservation: Monopoly
Why must solvent utilities encourage and reward waste?

Let me introduce you to my friend – a professional schizophrenic – who manages conservation programs at a local urban water utility in the US.

She’s hardly alone in her mental instability or the predicament that caused it. Using her name would jeopardize her career. But based on 53,000 American water utilities, I estimate at least 100,000 people like her suffer from split personality in the US alone. Her symptoms remain mild – a nervous twitch, sweaty palms and rolling eyes – but worsen as water scarcity puts competing stresses on her utility’s ageing system.

The roots of her disorder are simple. Nearly a decade ago she was hired, given a small staff, budget and discretionary funds to promote ambitious conservation programs and rebates throughout the service area of her water utility. It was the ideal job to match her ideals, a rare opportunity that pays you to do what you love. But there was, alas, a deep and hidden problem, which gave rise to psychological complications.

The Three Paradoxes that Obstruct Water Conservation, and How We Can Resolve Them through H2Ownership

Here's part 2 of the series on water conservation by global expert James Workman, pictured on the right.

Next installment: next Friday!

James Workman is author of Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought. He is a visiting
professor at Wesleyan University’s College of the Environment and co-founder of SmartMarkets LLC, an online utility-based platform that unlocks equitable water and energy markets for cities using the system that has sustained the Kalahari’s indigenous people for 30,000 years.

II. The Second Paradox of Water Conservation: Efficiency
Why does your water-saving device increase our collective thirst?

The ghost of the late British economist William Stanley Jevons is disrupting our best efforts to tackle climate change.

Jevons’ specter first haunted hybrid vehicle owners. To get their extra mileage’s worth and display clean and fuel-efficient credentials, they began to drive faster, farther, more frequently than before. Jevons then haunted homes that installed compact fluorescent bulbs and “green” appliances, making people switch on more lights and gadgets, more often, and leave them on longer or even continuously.

In short, Jevons makes us frugal misers burn more of the energy we set out to save. And even if I’m disciplined enough to resist Jevons and still stamp down demand, my haunted neighbors offset my savings by using up my spare fuel and electricity.

The Three Paradoxes that Obstruct Water Conservation, and How We Can Resolve Them through H2Ownership

Here's the first of a four-part series on water conservation by global expert James Workman, pictured here.

Look for the next installments of this important story on Fridays.

James Workman is author of  Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought.  He is a visiting
professor at Wesleyan University’s College of the
Environment and co-founder of SmartMarkets LLC,
an online utility-based platform that unlocks equitable water and energy markets for cities using the system that has sustained the Kalahari’s indigenous people for 30,000 years.

I. The First Paradox of Water Conservation: Value
Why is water so "priceless" in use, yet so worthless in exchange?

Peter Brabeck-Letmathe chairs Nestlé, the world’s 44th largest company, which last year earned US$ 9.6 billion profits on US$ 100 billion in revenues. He is the consummate international businessman, bargaining hard, overseeing 280,000 employees, outflanking competitors, and at ease with heads of state. Yet he remains incapable of negotiating one simple and irreplaceable ingredient without which his company ceases to exist: water.

He hardly seems the quintessentially gloomy Malthusian, yet Brabeck foresees “limits to growth” because our global fresh water supply is both finite and being rapidly, stupidly, depleted. The world can sustainably use 4,200 cubic kilometers of water he notes, but it consumes 4,500 even as aquifers plummet and rivers run dry.

Another Inconvenient Truth
A few years back he called water scarcity “the other inconvenient truth,” one riskier than climate change, and predicted that the cost of staple cereals would rise as the world exhausted its water. Time proved him right. Grain prices spiked 90%, triggering widespread urban food riots like those from Tunisia and Yemen to Egypt and Libya.

Belu Water = Clean Water

Founded in the United Kingdom in 2002, the mission of bottled water company Belu is: "With the Earth running out of many of its natural resources, the great challenge of our generation is to create a sustainable balance between the needs of people and the resources of the planet. Belu Water was launched as a social enterprise to demonstrate the potential for businesses to take a leading role in developing such a sustainable future.

Belu has done this by creating the UK’s most eco-friendly brand of bottled water and thereby setting a new benchmark for the performance of the entire drinks industry.

Belu’s environmental and charitable efforts include:
- Creating the world’s first carbon neutral bottled water
- Using caps that are "PVC free," for safety we want to avoid phthalates getting into our water
- Committing all our profits to clean water projects through The Belu Foundation (Registered Charity: 1136687)
- Choosing not to import or export our water, this way we further reduce our environmental impact
- Developing a 500ml bottle made from 50% recycled plastic that is 100% recyclable, a new UK first !"
 
Indeed, Belu uses "bio-bottles" made from corn, which look like ordinary plastic bottles but are compostable. What's more, the company minimizes its environmental footprint by using clean electricity and locally sourced water, reducing waste and promoting PVC-free packaging. A non-profit organization, Belu donates every penny of its profits to fund clean water projects. For instance, it built a 12-meter long waste collector that removes one tonne of waste from the River Thames each week.
 
According to Belu, every bottle of Belu bought in the UK provides clean water for one person for one month.

Driving Sustainable Production and Consumption

The green economy, and balancing economic and environmental development, is an increasingly important topic in China. Global companies must demonstrate leadership in incorporating sustainability issues in their own operations and product offering. China is one of Nokia’s largest markets, and Nokia has had a substantial presence in the country for 25 years. Like in all Nokia’s local operations, sustainability issues in Nokia China are managed according to global policies and standards, including local production and supply chain management, as well as raising consumer awareness of take-back and recycling programs.

Based on a visionary goal created a decade ago, Nokia has set up a mobile industry value chain in the Xingwang Industrial Park in Beijing that “clusters” Nokia and its key suppliers to produce mobile phones under stringent environmental standards with regard to manufacturing, distribution, sales and recycling. Commissioned by Nokia in 2009, research at the Xingwang Industrial Park shows how well environmental protection and business goals can go hand in hand, achieving considerable cost reduction for the companies located in the area by reducing energy consumption, optimizing material use, and reducing both logistics and inventory costs. It has been called “one of the largest and most complete industry value chains in the world.”

Sustainable Steel Production

China produces nearly half a billion tons of steel annually. The resulting steel slag production, the partially vitreous by-product of smelting ore to separate the metal from the rest, amounts to some 40 million tons. Decreasing iron ore resources, coupled with increasing energy costs, have led Shanghai-based Baosteel to find ways to process the steel very efficiently while protecting the environment.

Driving Sustainable Development in China

ITT, a high-technology engineering and manufacturing company, operates on all seven continents, but is currently seeing its fastest and largest growth in China – where ITT’s water and wastewater pump systems play an increasingly prominent role in that country's expanding infrastructure development. By investing and establishing a presence in China over the past century, ITT has built credibility and a reputation for reliability among the Chinese people and government officials.

ITT has demonstrated its commitment to promoting sustainable development in China through the installation of energy- and water-efficient products and technologies in small- and large-scale projects, thus tackling China’s water access and quality issues.

Frequently, ITT’s customers in China are cities and project-based corporations working on major government infrastructure projects such as Three Gorges Dam, the South-North Water Diversion Project, the Suzhou Subway and the country’s numerous wastewater initiatives in Beijing, Shenyang and Kunming. Most recently, ITT committed to helping China’s Chongqing Water Group construct the sustainable water transport networks that are necessary to improve the quality and supply of freshwater in Chongqing, the largest city in Western China.

Internally, ITT’s manufacturing plants in Shenyang and Nanjing incorporate "green" practices, such as water treatment technologies that enable almost total water reuse and zero wastewater discharge – with the Nanjing plant conserving over 18,000 liters of water and wastewater each day.

To address the country’s water access and quality issues, ITT collaborated with the Center for Rural Drinking Water Safety, part of China’s Ministry of Water Resources, to complete two water treatment plants in China as part of a pilot project to find sustainable solutions for rural drinking water issues. The two plants supply more than 15,000 local residents with purified water that meets or surpasses national standards.

ITT also promotes sustainable development in China through its philanthropic efforts in the region. ITT Watermark, ITT’s signature corporate citizenship program, partnered with the China Women’s Development Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the lives of women and children, to provide eight rural schools with safe drinking water, new sanitation facilities, and education on water safety and hygiene. ITT also deployed its technology to address water distress following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, providing safe drinking water to more than 200,000 earthquake survivors.