From Souce to Sea

A new report from the National Trust suggests that we are ill equipped to the deal with the extremes of weather emanating from climate change that will lead to more flooding and drought events around the country.

The full report can be downloaded from here.

One of the recommendations suggests that we should be funding farmers to manage flood plains as flood plains so as to reduce the impacts of flooding downstream.

One of the case studies is at Wicken Fen where such an approach is being implemented. The Wicken Fen Vision is also bringing huge biodiversity, landscape, access and carbon sequestration benefits.

Each Briton uses 4,645 litres a day when hidden factors are included

The new report from WWF states that each UK citizen consumes over 4500 litres of water if hidden factors are taken into account. Conventional wisdom suggests that we (in the UK) use 150 litres a day - but this figures is 30 times too small if we take 'virtual' water into account.

Virtual water includes the amount of water used to produce the amount of water needed to produce imported goods we utilise. See the Guardian for further details.

Fred Pearce in his excellent book When the Rivers Run Dry covers this topics in some detail.

Our use of virtual / imported water mirrors our 'use' of of CO2 - we are an importing nation so we need to take account of our impact on water consumption and CO2 emissions in other nation nations around the world. The water used in producing oranges in Israel which we then consume in Britain are our problem. Likewise the CO2 emissions emitted manufacturing cars overseas and producing consumers goods, in say, China, are also our problem.

See the following WWF link for details of the report. The full report can also be download ed from here.