An Expert Opinion: Sandra Postel
Sandra Postel has been a leading authority on global freshwater issues for 25 years. Through her organization, The Global Water Policy Project, Postel conducts research, writes, and travels the world providing insights into water challenges and solutions. A former Pew Scholar in Conservation and the Environment, she is currently the National Geographic Society’s Freshwater Fellow —and she NEVER drinks bottled water if she can help it.
You’ve said in the future the human story will become a water story, what do you mean by that?
Water is going to be a central driver of the human experience over the next several decades and beyond. It’s about the scarcity of water; the fact that we’re running into limits in so many places around the world when it comes to water to grow food, water to keep cities expanding, and water to keep our populations supplied with what they need.
It’s been said “What oil was to the twentieth century, water will be to the twenty-first,” meaning conflict will erupt over water access. Are wars over water inevitable?
I think water’s a more serious issue than the oil issue, given that there’s no substitute for water. We can’t transition away from water, the way we can from oil to other sources of energy. The idea that there will be wars over water the way there have been wars over oil; I think that’s a distraction. There’s going to be enormous social unrest and many humanitarian crises around water and related food shortages within countries. We need to think about and plan more for these circumstances than worrying about armies mobilizing over water. When you look at the river basins around the world, there’s more of a tendency to cooperate than to enter into conflict, so that’s a good thing.
I remember once watching David Letterman do a monologue when New York was in drought where he said, “I keep hearing about this water shortage so last night I turned on my shower and this morning it was still going strong.” How can you communicate about water scarcity when, in the first world, it’s pretty much available on demand?