Peak water

Peak water is a concept that underlines the growing constraints on the availability, quality, and use of freshwater resources.

Peak water is defined in a 2010 peer-reviewed article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Peter Gleick and Meena Palaniappan. They distinguish between peak renewable, peak non-renewable, and peak ecological water in order to demonstrate the fact that although there is a vast amount of water on the planet, sustainably managed water is becoming scarce.

Lester R. Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, wrote in 2013 that although there was extensive literature on peak oil, it was peak water that is "the real threat to our future". An assessment was published in August 2011 in the 's journal. Much of the world's water in underground aquifers and in lakes can be depleted and thus resembles a finite resource. The phrase peak water sparks debates similar to those about peak oil. In 2010, New York Times chose "peak water" as one of its 33 "Words of the Year".

There are concerns about impending peak water in several areas around the world:

If present trends continue, 1.8 billion people will be living with absolute water scarcity by 2025, and two-thirds of the world could be subject to water stress. Ultimately, peak water is not about running out of freshwater, but about reaching physical, economic, and environmental limits on meeting human demands for water and the subsequent decline of water availability and use.

The Hubbert curve has become popular in the scientific community for predicting the depletion of various natural resources. M. King Hubbert created this measurement device in 1956 for a variety of finite resources such as coal, oil, natural gas and uranium. Hubbert's curve was not applied to resources such as water originally, since water is a renewable resource. Some forms of water, however, such as fossil water, exhibit similar characteristics to oil, and overpumping (faster than the rate of natural recharge of groundwater) often results in a Hubbert-type peak. A modified Hubbert curve applies to any resource that can be harvested faster than it can be replaced. Like peak oil, peak water is inevitable given the rate of extraction of certain water systems. A current argument is that growing populations and demands for water will inevitably lead to non-renewable use of water resources.

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