Slashdot Mirror
Beneath Africa, Survey Finds 'Huge' Water Reserves
gambit3 writes with this news, carried by the BBC: "Scientists say the notoriously dry continent of Africa is sitting on a vast reservoir of groundwater. They argue that the total volume of water in aquifers underground is 100 times the amount found on the surface. Across Africa more than 300 million people are said not to have access to safe drinking water. Freshwater rivers and lakes are subject to seasonal floods and droughts that can limit their availability for people and for agriculture. At present only 5% of arable land is irrigated."
Even the scientists behind the research are stressing that industrial-scale drilling will exaust the supply eventually.
Presumably it will last a long time, if they make sure to tightly regulate any tapping of industrial scale quantities, ensure that the amount of water drawn out is less than the local replenishment rate, and ensure that players are treated fairly, no one entity is allowed to hog the resource, and any entity that does tap the resource pays a quantity-dependant price for doing so, to discourage waste.
There's no inherent reason that industrial-scale drilling has to be allowed to exhaust the supply
It's not new that there are huge groundwater resources in Africa. The only new thing in the article is that they mapped it in more detail then ever before. And these resources are also heavily utilized today. However, using groundwater for food production is not without great danger - the keyword here is salinification.
Guinea worm is looking like it is on the verge of eradication thanks to a concentrated effort over the last 10 years, a 99% reduction over the last 25 years. This is through basic sanitation and proper treatment procedure with none of this no-holds-barred short term thinking you are proposing.
It just awaits the opening of certain war-torn areas to health workers, then it will be gone for good. Proposing to deplete a valuable resource in its name just makes you sound impetuous and stupid.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Gaddafi has built a pipe system to use the huge aquifer under Libya. My friend told me that this was the reason why NATO went to war in Libya but not in Syria. The latter had nothing to offer (a la oil etc.) but the former has a huge treasure, and you can't have someone who doesn't play ball with the rich guys in charge.
Do I share my friend's opinion? Every day more and more.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
It doesn't help Africa that the Pope and George Bush both told the many many catholics there not to use contraception because... well, I don't know actually.
-- Cheers!
We had effective contraception and abortion LONG before the 60s. There is a long history of resource rich societies NOT breeding as much as would be expected from a simple resource utilization model.
Actually, that is *exactly* what we do right now - with "Fiji" water being the biggest example - a spring with lots and lots of lovely water coming out of it that is bottled up and shipped to the US while the local population faces water shortages, all because people have been fooled into thinking that the Fiji water is somehow better than tap water.
Look at the population figures excluding immigration. For most of the EU, population growth is slightly negative if you discount immigration, which indicates that people are not breeding at below replacement rate.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News