Abstract
Global water resources are under pressure due to increasing population and diminishing conventional water resources caused by global warming. Water scarcity is a daunting global problem which has prompted efforts to find unconventional resources as an appealing substitute for conventional water, particularly in arid and semiarid regions. Ice is one such unconventional water resource, which is available mainly in the Arctic and Antarctic. In this study, opportunities and challenges in iceberg utilization as a source of freshwater were investigated on the basis of a systematic literature review (SLR). A search in three databases (Scopus, Web of Science, and ProQuest) yielded 47 separate studies from 1974 to 2019. The SLR indicated that harvesting iceberg water, one of the purest sources of water, offers benefits ranging from supplying freshwater and creating new jobs to avoiding iceberg damage to offshore structures. Economic considerations and risks associated with iceberg towing were identified as the main limitations to iceberg harvesting, while environmental impacts were identified as the main challenge to exploiting this resource. Assessment of trends in ice sheets in Arctic and Antarctic across different spatiotemporal scales indicated that the main sources of icebergs showed a statistically significant (p < 0.01) decreasing trend for all months and seasons during 2005–2019.
Highlights
Water scarcity is one of the largest global risks and is a major challenge to sustainable development and a potential source of conflict within and between countries, especially in arid and semiarid regions [1,2,3,4]
Over 60% of the global population lives in areas under water stress, where available water resources cannot meet demand for at least 1 month of the year [5,6]
It is crucial to modify water resource management in many societies to mitigate the consequences of water shortages
Summary
Water scarcity is one of the largest global risks and is a major challenge to sustainable development and a potential source of conflict within and between countries, especially in arid and semiarid regions [1,2,3,4]. Over 60% of the global population lives in areas under water stress, where available water resources cannot meet demand for at least 1 month of the year [5,6]. 97% of global available water resources are saline, and only 3% occur in the form of freshwater. Available freshwater resources with a potable quality are very limited [7,8,9]. Over two-thirds of global freshwater resources are stored in the form of ice, of which over 90% is located in the Antarctic. Around 2000 km of this total volume detaches as icebergs, which can be harvested as an unconventional source of water [10,11,12,13]. An iceberg is a large floating of ice mass separated from glaciers in the polar regions and carried to sea
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