People and Water

Sustainable Water Management

In this course, Dr Jonathan Clarke (University of Warwick) explores water management and how it can be made more sustainable in the future. In the first module, we think about the major global stores of water, the hydrological cycle, and the importance of water for human life and society. The second module then outlines the central role of water management in the development of human civilisation, from the advent of agriculture to the Industrial Revolution. In the third module, we consider contemporary global water challenges related to rapid urbanisation, population growth, and climate change. In the fourth, we survey major global sources of water and patterns in its consumption, and we conclude with a fifth module on the growing problem of flooding, and how water can be managed more sustainably going forward.

People and Water

In this module, we think about the importance of water for human life and society. We focus on: (i) the major global stores of water and the proportion of Earth’s water which is available for human use; (ii) water as a renewable resource, and how humans are disrupting the hydrological cycle through pollution, anthropogenic climate change and overconsumption; (iii) some key uses of water for humans, including drinking, food and energy production, and transportation; (iv) the centrality of water to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).