Sustainable water management
Introduction
water management or water resource management is the activity of planning, developing, distributing and directing the optimal use of water resources. It is a subset of water cycle management. It is sometimes called "sustainable water resources management", but this is a redundancy, because all optimal management is necessarily sustainable.
Water management includes the processes, strategies and measures that are carried out in order to use water efficiently and without altering its quality.
Water is essential for the survival of living beings. Water management must continue to adapt to current and future changes in the existence and allocation of these resources. With growing uncertainty over global warming and the long-term impacts of management actions, decision-making will become even more difficult. Global warming is likely to lead to situations not yet experienced. Consequently, alternative management strategies are sought to avoid setbacks in the allocation of water resources.
**taking care of water means using it in an appropriate, responsible and rational manner, that is, avoiding waste and protecting natural sources of water and taking care of it for future generations, for example:
repair water leaks
close taps
wash with full loads
'
Ideally, water resources planning should consider all demands for water (health, agriculture, industry, environment), which compete with each other for a scarce resource. Planning seeks to equitably distribute water to satisfy all demands. As in other cases of resource management, this is rarely possible in practice.
One of the biggest concerns about water resources is the sustainability of their current and future allocation.[1] When water becomes scarcer, the importance of how it is managed grows enormously. Finding a balance between what people need and what the environment needs is an important step in water resource sustainability.
Overview
Water is an essential resource for all life on the planet. Of the Earth's water resources, only 3% is fresh water (in principle salt water is not usable, although this can be qualified) and 2 thirds of this fresh water are imprisoned in the polar caps and glaciers. Of the remaining 1%, a fifth are in remote, hard-to-reach areas, and much of the heavy monsoon rains and flooding cannot be easily harnessed. Water is becoming increasingly scarce, and access to clean, safe drinking water (potable water) is limited. Currently only approximately 0.08% of the world's fresh water is exploited by a humanity in ever-increasing demand for drinking water, sanitation, manufacturing, irrigation of food crops and leisure.[3] Due to the small percentage of fresh water remaining, optimizing it has been an ongoing difficulty in several places around the world. The desalination of seawater with renewable energy is helping to alleviate some of these difficulties.