CONCLUSION - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 301

Instead of flood-irrigating fields—a notoriously inefficient practice that leads to the
evaporation of water, the buildup of salt in the soil, and polluting runoff—Pearce and
others recommend using traditional methods of water collection once popular in India,
China, and throughout the Middle East (which were often undone by colonial occupi-
ers, who didn't understand how effective they were).
Chief among these methods is “rain harvesting,” which is the collection of rainwater
in cisterns, qanats (vertical shatways connected to horizontal tunnels), and ponds that
allow water to percolate underground and replenish aquifers. Some 800 million acre-
feet of water falls from the clouds every day, and over half the world's crops are already
watered by rain. “Harvested” water is stored underground, which limits evaporation,
and is carefully doled out. With wider use, rain harvesting could replace expensive, in-
efficient irrigation systems in many places.
Similar techniques could also improve life in urban settings. In Los Angeles, a desert
city said to be the world's most paved area, activists are pushing to build catchments and
porous streets in order to collect the city's scant precipitation, avoid floods and storm-
water runoff when the skies do open, and lessen the city's dependence on expensive wa-
ter imported from distant sources, such as the Colorado River. In 2010, Mayor Michael
Bloomberg announced a twenty-year $1.5 billion initiative to make New York a “per-
meable city” that will use more trees, green roofs, porous roads, and revived wetlands
to capture and retain storm water, reduce sewage overflows, clean waterways, cut costs,
and green the Big Apple.
Such initiatives are gaining popularity and dovetail with new questions about the
ecological impact of human water use. Bob Hirsch, of the US Geological Survey, has no-
ticed a growing “societal shift in values over water.” While people need H 2 O for health
and economic growth, the ecosystem—what Hirsch refers to as “the ish” —also needs
water to survive. “The question used to be 'How much water can we take outof the
river?' ” he said. “Now people ask, 'How much water can we leave inthe river?' There is
no question that 'the fish' has a seat at the negotiating table.”
But balancing the water needs of man and the fish is complex. One of the most prom-
ising solutions is so-called Soft Path water management, developed by Peter Gleick and
other academics.
heSotPath was a phrase coined by one of Gleick's old friends, the physicist, mountain
guide, and inventor Amory Lovins, best known for founding the Rocky Mountain Insti-
tute, an environmental think tank in Colorado. In a 1976 essay in ForeignAfairs,Lov-
ins first laid out his notion of a future powered by “sot energy,” by which he meant solar,
wind, and geothermal power. The Soft Path assumes that efficiency and renewability are
paramount, and that creating power is only a means to an end, not the end itself. It pre-