The challenge of freshwater treatment
As much we can say that in our time, oil is the queen of resources – because we live in the age of plastic and therefore it does not content itself to fuel our engines – as much water is of another nature: it is a “vital” resource in the first sense of the term, according to the adage that everyone knows: “water is life”.
To understand the challenge of treating freshwater – we are not talking about wastewater treatment here, which is another subject – we have to remember a few figures.
What may be surprising, given the stress that so many regions are undergoing in this regard, is that as such, water is an abundant resource. It covers 70% of the earth’s surface. But also, 97% of this water is salt water, therefore unsuitable for use. This leaves 2 and a half percent of fresh water, most of which is immobilized in the form of ice in Greenland and on the Antarctic continent, the South Pole. So only 0.7% of fresh water remains available for human consumption.
Well, this figure which seems slim remains more than sufficient, even beyond our needs. That is 40,000 km3, or 6,500 m3 per inhabitant each year. That’s more than enough, when you think that privileged countries like ours only consume 3,300 per person.
Fresh water: an unevenly distributed resource
The problem is therefore not the scarcity of fresh water, but its uneven distribution on Earth. We have just cited the figure for France, where you wash your car with drinking water; where, in the small corners, we draw drinking water flushes. It is far from the water stress threshold, set at 500 m3 per inhabitant per year. On the other hand, a country like Yemen, for example, is at 200m3: at home, fresh water is a daily problem.
And yet we are only talking about fresh water here, but it is about making it drinkable. Very watered regions, very rich in water, such as the Congo Basin, suffer from a structural shortage resulting from a lack of sanitation infrastructure. As much as access to drinking water is universal in developed countries, it remains a problem for others where it falls to 80%, and even only 50% for sanitation. As for the home connection to drinking water, it is almost 100% in developed countries, but only 16% in black Africa, for example.
The “hydro-powers”
This shows the extent of the challenges facing men to rectify as much as possible these inequalities of access. This also means that in this landscape the states considered as “hydro-powers” stand out from other states lacking water or at least lacking the technical know-how to clean it up. France is particularly well placed in this ranking, since, among the four leaders in this sector, two are French. This position strengthens its rank among the international community, but also places it before a responsibility that many would like to be moral.
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