250 Ssience Fiction Survey/Conferences

The book is of interest as further

development of the series, but in the
end I was disappointed. It is not well-
integrated; the philosophical quotes
that begin each chapter on the nature
of religion and time, are never re-
flected in the actual plot. How Pauls
religion has affected the social struc-
tures of Dune or the empire is not
clear, nor was I ever able to grasp what
the childrens ability to foresee/ alter
the future enables them to do in the
present and why. New terms and
concepts are introduced that are not
foreshadowed in the earlier books,
causing some confusion, and the ending
(archetypal Superman) is sexist to
boot. So, if youve started the trilogy,
finish it with this book; otherwise,
read Briton.
CONFERENCES
Defining water management for the 1980s
The United Nations Water Con-
ference, Mar de1 Plats, Argentina,
March 1977
WATER management will assume a new
role in the 198Os, if only to avoid an
impending water crisis. But how will
this crisis manifest itself? The water
conference greatly contributed to a
definition of the crisis. Very briefly,
there are four basic problems which
have been ignored for too long, if only
because water seemed abundant for
ever and was very cheap:
l the worlds water is highly unevenly
distributed between areas, seasons
and years,
l common ownership of river basins
and lakes foments political and other
conflicts,
0 water contamination remains largely
unchecked, and, last but not least,
l only a small portion of the worlds
water resources can be used at
present.
The water supply
The worlds total water stock is guessti-
mated at 1.4 billion km3. More than
97% of this is seawater which cannot
yet be desalted on a large scale, eco-
nomically. This leaves about 40 million
km3 of surface water (mainly ice caps
and glaciers) and groundwater.
That limits the water supply to 8
million km3 of groundwater and 0.2
million km3 of surface water, mostly
rivers, and lakes. However, much of the
groundwater is beyond mans present
exploitation as it lies at a depth of more
than 800 metres. The usable stock is
thus limited to 0.3 million km3 of
groundwater and 0.2 million km3 of
surface water. [One km3 equals 1
trillion ( 10i2) litre.]
The limit of withdrawal is the rain
and snow, the precipitation-the cru-
cial stage of the cycle which starts with
evaporation of the oceans, rivers, lakes
and the land. This is a never ending
cycle, natures one great desalination
plant. The daily water cycle averages
1100 km3, of which 250 km3 fall on the
land where man may use it. Except that
about 70% of that precipitation never
enters the streamflow. Before man can
use it, it evaporates or is absorbed by
plants and transpired through their
leaves.
The water cycle is more complex
than pictured here, but it does imply
that we face a limited water supply.
The demand for water
All the economic sectors need water:
in most industrialised nations, energy
FUTURES J une 1977
Conferences 251
and manufacturing industry now make
the heaviest claim on water eg mining,
building, primary metal plants, re-
fineries, pulp and paper industry,
chemical industry, and the food and
beverage industries.
One must distinguish between water
consumption and water use. Industry
uses generally the same water twice or
even more frequently.
The crux of the matter is not how
much water industry uses, but rather
what it uses the water for, how much
it pays for it, and to what extent it
contam~ates the water which it returns
to the streamflow.
At present, water is not an eco-
nomic factor in industry. The average
cost of water in the total plant cost
varies from 0.1 o/ 0 to 1 loo/ &--and occa-
sionally reaches 2.5%. Given the inevi-
tably high cost of water management,
one can expect fresh water to become
more expensive.
Taken as a whole, North American
industry recycles water once, but some
industries recycle water twice. The
degree of recycling and reuse is
rising every year (a ton of steel requires
about 200 000 litre of water, a ton of
paper 300 000 litre and a ton of syn-
thetic rubber 2 000 000 litre).
Currently, industrys most important
competitors for water are energy and
agriculture (it takes an average 10 litre
of water to produce one kWh).
Worldwide, agriculture uses three-
quarters of all the water consumed.
Irrigated land requires a million gallons
of water per acre on an average (10
million Iitre per hectare)-but the
high-yield miracle rice and corn use
quite a lot more. In many countries it
takes 10 litre of water for a kilo of
springbeans, 10 000 litre for a dozen
Iarge eggs, and 30 000 Iitre for a kiIo of
prime beef. These quantities depend of
course on a variety of factors, such as
humidity, light, soil moisture, tempera-
ture and wind. However, the water
intake can average one hundred times
the dry weight of a plant during one
growing season. Vegetables use much
more water than men or animaIs,
because their throughput of water is
tremendous. (One hectare of potatoes
demands 4 million litre of water.)
If, as is expected, the need for irriga-
tion rises more sharply than the
demand for energy and industrial goods
then competition for water will be
fierce in many parts of the world.
Cooperation
The heart of the matter at the con-
ference was, obviously, the need to
manage water judiciously by a com-
prehensive cooperative system between
nations as well as between users. While
the technicians will be called upon to
expand the available amount of surface
water and groundwater, the private
sector will be invited to cooperate with
the public sector in water management.
The cure-all for the water crisis is
called water management, but it
means different things to different
people. At the water conference, the
fo~owing facets of rational management
were mostly discussed :
o Improve the distribution of water, by
constructing surface reservoirs, carry-
ing water from surplus to deficit
territories, and protecting the soil of
natural watersheds.
l Expand, in the same vein, the use of
underground storage.
a Enhance the efficiency in the use of
water by recycling, and by reducing
waste.
l Ameliorate the quality of water by
purifying sewage and keeping waste-
waters away from river basins ancl
lakes.
l Expand the yield of water by desdlt-
ing seawater, reduce losses in eva-
poration, and modify the weather.
Rational water management would
require a global information system
using communications satellites. The
latter are to measure rain, and river
gauges all over the world, computerise
the results and provide the nations with
FUTURES J une 1977
252 Conferences
up to date information on the hydro-
logical cycle. The system would chart
river flows and levels by latitude and
longitude. Eventually it would be used
to measure groundwater levels, soil
moisture, snow cover, atmospheric
water vapour, lake levels, and salinity in
estuaries. In the industrial sphere, it
would imply the creation of closed
circuit systems, whereby water circu-
lates without risking contamination of
lakes, streams and river basins. This
would in addition reduce the absolute
withdrawal of water from the hydro-
logical cycle.
Rational water management assumes
a high degree of cooperation between
countries and professions. Last but not
least, it assumes that in view of the ever
rising demand for water (6% per year,
so far) and the constant volume of
supply, the price of water will have to
be commensurate with the usefulness of
Western Europe in transition
its application and the contamination
of the process, end-, and by-products.
Hitherto, water management has
been the bailiwick of the public sector.
The role of industry in water manage-
ment has been almost nil. This may well
explain why so little new technology has
been developed in the area of water
supply and distribution.
Since industry was all but absent at
the water conference, its future role in
water management and cooperation
remains to be defined. It could well be
that a steep rise in the cost of water,
advocated inter alia by the World Bank,
will render industry sensitive to the
challenge of water management, and
will render the public authorities
sensitive to a valuable contribution by
industry.
Andre van Darn
Argentina
International Symposium on
Europes future: new initiatives
and methods in managing
change, London, 30-3 1 March
1977
This symposium, a follow-up to an
earlier one,l brought together partici-
pants whose governments were all
under threat: eg being forced into
coalitions by new political, social and
economic conditions, or into devaluing
the currency. The commonality of
conditions, particularly the paradoxes,
in European countries was readily
established. For example there is in
many countries an incompatibility
between individuals desire to take
initiatives and government unwilling-
ness to reward resourcefulness and offer
security to such individuals.
Throughout the meeting a constant
underlying theme was that Western
Europe is however on the eve of major
change. Participants endeavoured to
characterise the changes and to suggest
action points where change could also
be catalysed.
Most felt that initiatives would have
to be taken at a nongovernmental,
individual, and corporate level. As
Terence Price (UK) pointed out, a
basic problem in peacetime, where a
major objective is the preservation of a
pluralistic society, is that of establishing
a consensus, of providing a vision.
He suggested that the vision would
come from the political and social
institutions, especially if these were
modelled along US lines. It was
replied, first that US practices are
inappropriate to the European con-
text, and second that there is an initial
need for thinkers and philosophers to
point out the fundamental problems,
ask the right questions, and provide
the vision, before establishing the
institutions.
FUTURES J une 1977