Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Climate change: 1.9 billion people rely on
natural 'water towers'
When you hear a water tower, you may imagine
an elevated water tank that distributes water to the projected area. The water
also could be used as emergency storage for fire protection. But there are
natural water towers that provide and store water to millions of people. They
are mountainous regions that generate and store vast quantities of water. There
are 78 of them in the world and they deliver the water in a controlled way to the
people and land downstream. For example, the Himalayan, Karakoram, and other
mountain ranges feed Indus basin where over 200 million people live with the
rain, snow, lakes, and glaciers. But the population of the area is increasing
rapidly, thus more water is consumed for drinking, living, irrigation, and
industries than the supply. Human ingenuity could manage the distribution and
preservation of the limited and reducing supply of the water, but the region includes
Afghanistan, China, India, and Pakistan, that are not always friendly or
cooperative to each other. Also, global warming is disrupting precipitation
patterns, melting glaciers, and thus reducing water supply to the region where the
demand for water is rapidly increasing.
A dispute or war in any fashion could erupt
for this vulnerable natural resource in this fragile basin unless constructive talks
and works began before it’s too late.
Enjoy reading the article and learn about
natural water towers.
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