Article #1 – A global water crisis: growing needs and threatened resources

Water reuse: technology to GreenUp our blue planet

The 21st century seems set to be the "century of thirst". Day after day, we are witnessing the development of a global water crisis, with dire consequences. Faced with this crisis, which is increasingly questioning our uses of this vital resource, and threatening to disrupt them, we are not helpless. Technology brings us solutions to deal with it; it is up to us to mobilize them in our territories – and the sooner, the better.?

Through this series of discussions with colleagues from Veolia , both top executives and experts, I want to advocate for water reuse, a concrete solution that is already available and mature, and can be applied everywhere. We will explain how this technology can really change the game in the fight to preserve this precious resource: fresh water.

In this first conversation with Boris D. , one of Veolia ’s top experts for hydrogeology, who supports our teams dealing everyday with the concrete manifestations of this water crisis, by providing them with solutions that contribute to the preservation of this precious resource, we share a clear observation that urges us to take action.

Is the world really running out of water?

Anne Le Guennec:

It’s true, an increasing number of regions are facing severe water stress. As early as 2021, a UN report warned: “Drought is about to become the next pandemic, and there is no vaccine to cure it”. According to the World Resources Institute’s 2023 report, half the world's population already suffers from “high” water stress for at least one month a year; and in the Middle East or North Africa, 83% of the population is exposed to “very high” water stress. By 2050, an additional 1 billion people will face an increased risk of water shortage.

But, ironically, at the same time as almost a quarter of humanity is threatened to run out of this essential resource, other regions are subject to catastrophic floods of unprecedented magnitude.

Boris David:

Exactly. It's not so much that there's a shortage of water overall on the planet, but rather that water isn't where nor when we need it: many regions lack fresh water, while others receive way too much rainfall. These imbalances between needs and available resources have always existed, and great civilizations have, for millennia, tried to adapt to this situation by building monumental infrastructure, like aqueducts, to manage these imbalances and their variations over time. Rainfalls, floods, and droughts have always been irregular, unpredictable phenomena. What is new in the current situation is the fast disruption of established patterns of the water cycle, and the increased variability of water flows, which are evolving very quickly, putting our water systems under heavy pressure.

What are the causes of this global water crisis?

Anne Le Guennec:

The current water crisis is the consequence of a merciless scissors effect. On the one hand, the need for fresh water has skyrocketed over the last century, and continues to grow. The world’s population is increasing, while, at the same time, per capita water consumption is also rising, as economic development leads to urbanization, and to the mobilization of water resources for agriculture and industry.

And on the other hand, resources are fragilized and tend to become scarcer, both because in some places withdrawals have exceeded the natural replenishment rate, and under the effects of climate change.

?

Boris David:

Indeed! Climate change creates severe disruptions to the water cycle, and makes the availability of water locally increasingly volatile. Rising temperatures intensify the evaporation of water and its overall cycle, as more energy needs to be evacuated. As a result, rainfalls adopt new, different patterns: they are less frequent and much more intense. These extreme meteorological phenomena reduce infiltration into soils that are either too dry or, on the contrary, saturated, and prevent groundwater from being recharged, while disrupting watercourses. Spatial patterns are also affected:?there is less rain here and more there, as compared to 10 years ago… Recent news reports provide striking examples, with Dubai being flooded while the Colombian capital, Bogota, is experiencing an unprecedented drought.

Anne Le Guennec:

Furthermore, in many hitherto temperate regions, climate change also increases the need for irrigation, which further increases the stress on water systems… This is for example the case in France, Spain, Italy. We need to anticipate these evolutions and think at least 10 years ahead to adapt our water systems to these new needs.

Can you elaborate on the consequences of water stress? What changes when there’s less water?

Anne Le Guennec:

Water is absolutely fundamental. Firstly, because our very existence depends on it. Our bodies contain an average of 65% water: without water, a human being cannot live for more than two or three days. Access to fresh water is an essential enabler of life!

But water is also essential to grow our food and to support our economy - and access to freshwater is becoming an increasingly important aspect of territorial sovereignty, without which any development strategy would be hindered. Many industries, including manufacturing and energy production, are heavily dependent on water for processes, cooling, and cleaning. Most people don’t really realize this, but producing the objects of our everyday life consumes enormous amounts of water: around 3.500 liters of water to produce a pair of jeans, up to 13.000 liters for a smartphone… Taking into account this indirect consumption, an average French person consumes around 4.900 liters of water every day.

Boris David:

If we did nothing to counter the current reduction in water availability, unmitigated severe water stress would have terrible consequences. Our whole way of life would be affected, starting with our agriculture, on which we are totally dependent.

On another, more long-term level, the ecological transformation currently being implemented to make our activities more sustainable is also dependent on water. Take energy, for instance: hydropower is totally dependent on river flows, nuclear power as well, for cooling plants… And the production of batteries, especially lithium-ion batteries, which play a central role in the effort to step away from fossil fuels, involves highly water-intensive processes, including the mining and processing of raw materials like lithium, cobalt, and nickel.?

Do these changes affect the whole world?

Boris David:

The effects of this water crisis are being felt throughout the world, and they are not confined to developing countries - even if they are more severely felt in the latter, where basic water treatment infrastructure lack. But they can be very different from one country or region to another, taking the form of droughts and heatwaves, or extreme rainfall and flooding…

In Europe, 11% of the population is already suffering from the scarcity of freshwater, and that proportion will rise to 30% by 2030. For example, with industry accounting for 90% of the country's water needs, Belgium meets the criteria for high water stress. Spain deals with the same challenge: in February 2024, Barcelona declared a state of water emergency, even before the onset of the summer season. Experiencing its worst drought in a century, Catalonia has been forced to impose water restrictions on six million inhabitants in over 200 municipalities.

The situation is similar for many countries in the Americas. For over ten years now, Chile has been experiencing a “mega-drought”, with a rainfall deficit of 20 to 40% depending on regions. And in California, where water reserves are already under pressure, they should fall by another 10% over the next few decades, as a result of a long-term trend towards aridification of the region.

Anne Le Guennec:

France is also affected: it has just experienced a historic drought of five years, culminating in 2022, with the worst drought since 1959. Every summer, 20% of French metropolitan territory are subject to water restrictions due to water shortages. In 2022, the water supply of over 700 municipalities was at risk, with 340 of them having to be supplied by tanker trucks and 200 by bottled mineral water. Things are not likely to improve: over the next 25 years in France, river flows are expected to fall by 20 to 60%, and groundwater levels by 20%.

Even if the torrential rains that France received through March and April 2024 have improved the situation considerably, extreme precipitation is not efficient to recharge water tables. The level of groundwater recharge remains uneven across the country, with specific warnings in the Eastern Pyrenees, where groundwater levels are still at historical lows.

What are the perspectives on the long term?

Boris David:

Unfortunately, these examples are not isolated; on the contrary, they are symptomatic of a growing threat that will spare no region. Powerful trends are at play that will only intensify over the next few years. The acceleration of these disruptions poses?many risks for our societies: for our domestic consumption and for our food sovereignty, but also for industrial uses as well as for the cooling of nuclear power plants. And it is still too soon to assess how climate change will impact local water cycles and consumption patterns in 10 or 20 years; we will need to adopt a very agile and dynamic approach to plan and dimension infrastructures.

?

Anne Le Guennec:

As to the future, I am reasonably optimistic: we have a full array of solutions, and I am convinced that new equilibriums can be found. They will, however, require vast investments to be implemented on a large scale. And in many developing countries, where basic sanitation infrastructure is often absent, building these will be an urgent first step.

Let’s talk about solutions now; how can we face these challenges?

Boris David:

Fortunately, we are not helpless. The first thing we can do is to protect existing resources, to make sure they are not polluted and that we exploit them sustainably. We also need to have more efficient equipment, and more frugal behaviors. We can do a lot to save water, by revamping aging water networks and modernizing appliances, and by nudging behaviors. But that won't be enough to reverse the trend. It will be increasingly indispensable to rely on technologies for depolluting and regenerating water, in particular on the reuse of treated wastewater, or water reuse.

?

Anne Le Guennec:

The good news is that these technologies are already very mature. It has proven over the last decades that it can help communities radically to reduce their net withdrawals from water tables. Available everywhere, sustainable and renewable, water reuse is one of the most promising solutions for better managing and preserving our “blue gold” heritage. Today, the most critical factor for its deployment is regulation, which can be very different across countries, with a direct impact on the roll out of water reuse, and on the proportion of wastewater that is recycled.

The next articles of this series will present in more detail how water reuse works, the diversity of use cases for which this technology provides solutions, and how it can contribute to securing sustainable access to water resources, everywhere and for everyone. They will also present concrete examples of water reuse facilities, and will highlight how different countries have taken up this subject, adopting very different regulations.

Stay tuned!