Article 9 of our Water Stress series is now up, and this one asks a question that becomes increasingly difficult the longer you think about it. What happens when there simply isn't enough water for everyone? Homes need water for drinking, washing and sanitation. Farmers need it to grow our food and water livestock. Rivers, ponds and wildlife need enough left in the environment to survive. Firefighters may need enormous quantities during exactly the hot, dry conditions causing the shortage. Industry and energy production need water, while new housing and data centres are adding new demands. So who gets priority? While writing the article, I realised there may be another question we should ask first: Who actually needs drinking-quality water? Do we really need to spend energy and money treating water until it is safe enough to drink, only to flush our toilets with it? Could rainwater water our gardens? Could greywater flush toilets? Could recycled water supply some industrial processes and cooling systems? Could farms store more winter rainfall for irrigation? Every alternative source potentially reduces the number of people and activities competing for the same drinking-water supply. But eventually, during a severe enough drought, difficult choices may still have to be made. And I don't think the answer is simply to produce a league table of homes, farms, wildlife, industry and technology. We need to understand what happens elsewhere in the system when we withhold water from each of them. If we stop irrigating a farm, what happens to food production? If we take more from a river, what happens to its ecosystem? If we restrict a factory, what does it produce? If a data centre needs water, what services depend upon it? And perhaps every major new development should have to answer another very simple question before it is built: Where will your water come from — particularly during a drought? 🔗 Read Article 9 — Who Gets the Water?

Article 8 of my Water Stress series is now up, and this one started with a conversation with a farmer. He is spending around £750,000 turning one of his fields into a reservoir so he can store water for periods when there isn't enough rain. As we stood there, he told me that 32mm of rain had fallen across his 5,000-acre farm in just two hours. That works out at something approaching 650 million litres of water. The rain had watered everything: crops, fields, trees, hedgerows and wildflowers. No irrigation pipes had to be moved. No pumps were running. No energy was consumed. But there was too much water, too quickly. Some newly laid crops were actually lifted from the soil. And later in the year, there may not be enough. That contradiction is at the heart of this article. We need to get better at moving water through time — keeping some of the water that arrives during wet periods until we need it during dry ones. But how? I look at everything from farm reservoirs, ponds, wetlands, soils and aquifers to the much bigger infrastructure being proposed here in Hampshire, including the controversial plans to recycle wastewater, pump it to Havant Thicket Reservoir and eventually move water towards where it is needed. I'm not trying to decide that one solution is right and another wrong. Instead, I think we need to get much better at asking: Are we solving the right water problem — and have we properly compared the alternatives? How much reliable water does each provide? What does it cost? How much energy and carbon does it require? What happens to wildlife and the landscape? What happens if it fails? And could a solution solve several problems at the same time? One idea kept coming back to me: Slow it. Spread it. Sink it. Store it. Perhaps before finding increasingly complicated ways of creating and moving more water, we should get much better at looking after the water that already falls on us. 🔗 Read Article 8: Are We Solving the Right Water Problem?

Here’s a great new video looking at what 1.5, 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 degC rise in temperature means for the planet and it’s people.

Article 7 of our Water Stress series is now up. This one started with what looks like a contradiction. We need more housing. But every new home creates a demand for water that could continue for the next 100 years — just as climate change is making our summer water supplies less reliable. So perhaps we're asking the wrong question. Rather than “Can we keep building without more water?”, perhaps we should ask: “What climate are we building for?” In the article I look at what happens if we start treating housing and water as parts of the same system. 💧 Could new homes capture much more of their own rainwater? 🚿 Could we routinely reuse greywater? 🌧️ Could roads and hard surfaces collect water rather than simply sending it down drains? 🌱 Could developments help replenish the aquifers beneath them? 🐸 Could ponds and wetlands store water while supporting wildlife and reducing flooding? And that led me to an idea I particularly like: It can take decades to build a reservoir. What if the neighbourhood was the reservoir? A house built today could still be standing towards the end of this century. We shouldn't just be designing it for today's climate, but for the one it will actually spend its life in. Have a read and tell me what you think. And if you know of developments anywhere in the world already doing this particularly well, please share them. That's exactly the kind of solution we want to find and learn from at Has2BGreen. 👀 Notice. 📣Speak Up. 💡Suggest Ideas. 🌍Share Solutions. Find the article here 👉 Article 7 — Can We Keep Building Without More Water?

Article 6 of our Water Stress series is now up. This one started with a simple question about Britain's increasing wildfires. We know that when a major fire overwhelms a local fire service, neighbouring services can send crews and equipment to help. But prolonged heat and drought don't stop at county boundaries. The same conditions that create a wildfire in Hampshire can exist simultaneously in Surrey, Berkshire and Sussex. So what happens when everybody needs help at once? That led me to investigate how prepared we actually are. 🚒 Can fire engines reach remote heathland and woodland? 💧 Where does the water come from when streams and ponds are already depleted by drought? 🚁 Does Britain have aircraft capable of water-bombing wildfires? 🔥 What happens when several major fires occur simultaneously? 🌍 And what can we learn from countries such as Spain, Portugal, Greece, Australia, Canada and the United States that have been dealing with this problem for much longer? One idea particularly struck me. Throughout this series we've been talking about moving water through time — capturing some of our abundant winter rainfall so it is available during increasingly dry summers. We've already found reasons to store water for people, farming and wildlife. Perhaps we need to add another: Water for emergencies. The latest article is: 🔥 When the Countryside Catches Fire Have a read, then come back and tell us what you think. And particularly, if you live somewhere where wildfire is already part of life, I'd love to hear what your community does that we could learn from. Notice. Speak Up. Suggest Ideas. Share Solutions.