Abstract
and we must continually replenish it. Analogous to losing oil in an automobile, being down only a few quarts of water can be fatal to humans. But it takes a lot more than drinking water to keep us healthy. We need water for cooking and bathing. We need water to grow food and generate electricity, to produce the clothes on our backs and the countless other goods we use in our daily lives. The challenges associated with meeting the water needs of a global population racing toward the seven billion mark are expansive and daunting. Today, more than one billion people lack access to safe, clean drinking water, nearly one billion are malnourished, two billion are without electricity, and more than five hundred million are harmed by floods every year. Fortunately, many governments and organizations around the world are working to alleviate these social maladies. In September 2000, the General Assembly of the United Nations, cognizant of the growing global dimensions of poverty and inspired by the dawn of a new millennium, came forth with a bold and far-reaching pledge that was signed by 189 nations. The Millennium Declaration, a commitment to reduce extreme poverty, set a series of goals with a 2015 deadline that have become known as the Millennium Development Goals. The breathtaking scope of these goals includes addressing poverty and hunger, universal education, gender equality, child health, maternal health, HIV/AIDS, environmental sustainability, and global partnerships. Among these laudable efforts are specific commitments to cut in half the number of people who suffer from hunger or are unable to access or afford safe drinking water.
Highlights
The Millennium Declaration is explicit about the need to pursue the alleviation of poverty in an environmentally sustainable manner: “We must spare no effort to free all of humanity, and above all our children and grandchildren, from the threat of living on a planet irredeemably spoilt by human activities, and whose resources would no longer be sufficient for their needs.”[1]
In the absence of adequate government regulation of water use and dams, these rulebooks are of utmost importance in defining sustainable practices in water-resource management and elevating public awareness about the social and environmental impact associated with unsustainable water use
Poor populations are disproportionately vulnerable, because they are often located in countries that lack adequate water-governance mechanisms and systems, and because they often depend directly upon the water, food resources, and other goods supplied by healthy freshwater ecosystems
Summary
There are good reasons to create a sustainability rulebook so that sustainability can become more than just a slogan This rulebook should Practicing true sustainability means encourage water users and managers to take a finding ways to manage all the welllong-term, macro-level pumpers who are tapping the same view of the hydrologic systems they use and aquifer so that groundwater levels regulate, and to work to ensure that the physical, biological, and chemido not decline over time. It means managing the farms in a watershed cal characteristics of those systems are not so that the water and chemicals that degraded over time. The success of these certification efforts in changing the rules of the water game may very well determine not just the fate of the Millennium Development Goals, and the way water will move through watersheds, cultures, and economies for generations to come
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