Is the world getting saltier?
Yes it is! And here is some of what it means:
- Around 20% of all the arable land in the world is irrigated. And around 20% of all the irrigated land suffers from salinization. We lose 1.6 million hectares this way every year.
- With Climate Change and rising sea levels, the saline sea waters are pushing harder and harder to infiltrate onto the land and into our aquifers.
- Urban freshwater resources are getting increasingly salinized due to seawater intrusion, activities in neighbouring rural areas and improper management of human waste. So cities have to spend more on water treatment and supply, making water (and everything else) more expensive.
So welcome to this theme page on TheWaterChannel, where we ask “Is the world getting saltier?,” "How?," "Where" and "What are we doing about it?." We have brought together videos, webinars, resources, links, discussions, articles and blog posts that would help answer this very important question and raise others that we need to ask. But this is not a static repository. We urge you to participate: comment, voice your opinion, share your knowledge and post your videos. Please enrich this space and add to the discussion:
… because we cannot continue to ignore salt just because we don’t see it!