When The Future of Our Planet is Bleak

What will happen to humanity in the future, if the water is no longer available to support life? Gee .. that must be a harrowing projection of our future on earth. But, consider any models from climate expert on the changing climate, every models will agree that the trend of global temperature is increasing.

Last week i attended UNOOSA (United Nation Office on Outer Space Affair) workshop on space application for water resources management (.. and bla bla bla .. quiet a long theme actually). There i met experts from many countries and we shared the same issue, that is the problems with water.

From Africa, they face the threat of desertification, from South Asian region, the retreat of glacier of Himalaya, from South East Asian, there they come the drought, flood, added by forest fire, and recently the tornado. And in the near future, the arsenic contamination will coming to play. Surely all those situations not just a surmise, but on the contrary an epitomizing of problems, that indeed we all have the problem with our water.

The issue not just on the scientific bases but intertwine with social, economic, even politic, that should address the importance of water resources management, either on local or global considerations.

One can say that there are plenty of water from the ocean. Well, true, but can we just directly use that water for our life? The necessity of availability and quality of water resources is a must situation, and for the developing country to obtain, exploit water resources is not a magical work, in the mean time the availability of good quality water is running low.

The ability to understand the cycle of water, from the spring to the sea, the rainfall, the reserved ground-water, surface run-off, evapo-transportation, water pollutions, sedimentary and erosion. Those needs the knowledge and all effort to overcome the situations (& of course the political will).

On global level, UN can help the situation by join effort on space-technology application, name it: geographical information, surveillance (remote sensing or in situ data collection), telecommunications and information processing, for all of which tasks space technologies make a significant contribution.

But what if all the good ideas only ended up on the table of some bureaucrats? Well, then just wait until we see it, if is it true that the future of our planet is that bleak?