Therena Medeiros IB ESS Period 3 3/15/2014

IB ESS : Practice Questions Topics 3.6 : Water Resources

6.

(a) (i) The demand of water has increased in both MEDCs and LEDCs, as populations are increasing as well as agriculture changing and expanding industry. MEDCs, such as the US and China, need more water as they wash more often, water their gardens, and wash their cars. But due to the United States’ need for water in industry to make certain products, we then use more water than China in industry due to our more demand of water. Also, because of China’s ever growing population, they need to use more water in agriculture than the United States to feed and provide for such a large population.

(ii) The evolution of technology changed the way we use water and extract it. The technology makes it easier to just take the water and use it for industry, agriculture, and domestic use. But also as MEDCs improve their use of technology, LEDCs cannot use this new technology to be able to extract as much water as the United States for example. As the population grows, the demand for water increases as well, therefore there must be an increase for water extraction.

(iii) Water is crucial for all life on earth. Water is a finite source, and cannot be created. The fact that our supply is finite has dire implications our world population of nearly 7 billion people and growing. The global water consumption rate doubles every twenty years, a pace that is double the rate of population growth. If the increase of population and consumption persists, there will be higher demand for water but less of it. There will be a growing situation of water-stress, which occurs in areas with high population rates.

14.

(a) As demonstrated in the case study of, Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan:

Fed by 2 rivers – Amu Darya and Syr Darya Both diverted by USSR for cotton irrigation Lost 80% of volume and 60 % of area Becoming more saline Heavily polluted Tugai forest habitat loss

Irrigation, industrialization and population increase all make demands on the supplies of freshwater. There is an inequity of usage and political consequences. Also, because there is habitat loss, it means that we are doing this unsustainably.

22.

(a) There is only a small part of the Earth’s water that is fresh water, and of this over 80% is in the form of ice caps and glaciers, a 0>1% is groundwater and the rest is made up of lakes, soil water, atmospheric water vapor, and rivers in decreasing order of storage. This means that most of the Earth’s water budget is not directly accessible by human populations. Fresh water is therefore an extremely limited resource. This

would create conflict in the future because there would be a constant competition and demand for fresh water (especially if population increases).

(b) The ecocentric view is to reduce the use of non-renewable resources and minimize the use of renewable ones. This view needs to be applied on a local scale because we need to conserve the use of water (a non-renewable and finite source) so that it will last longer for the growing population.

(c) Technocentrics have absolute faith in technology and industry and firmly believe that humans have control over nature. They don’t believe that problems will be solved by reducing industry. They believe that they should get food through industries that use up water. Also, they think that there should be lower prices for water, should grow more water-thirsty crops, and use more technology to make food for consumers and figure out scientific ways to make more food.