April 2010
Halcrow is major contributor to the Engineering the Future Alliance’s report, “Global Water Security - an engineering perspective”.
Launched on the 19 April, the report is the culmination of six months’ research into the worldwide issues of increasing water scarcity.
The report concluded that the security of the world’s water resources is under severe pressure from many sources - a world population explosion, rapid shifts of people from rural to urban areas, the impact of dietary change as countries develop, increasing pollution of water resources, the over-abstraction of groundwater and the not insignificant issues created by climate change.
Key recommendations included the global water sector needs to have an integrated water resource management and sustainability policy at its core; that the World Trade Organisation should address the water security issue in its strategy; and that water security should become a core component of UK policy making - with government assessing the interrelationship between water, food and energy security in UK, with a view to achieving an optimal balance of aligned national policy.
Michael Norton MBE, managing director of Halcrow's water and power business, who was chair at the launch event, is a member of the steering group for the Engineering the Future Alliance – an organisation that represents the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) and the Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM).
The steering group was supported by a team of Halcrow experts including Dr Richard Harpin, Halcrow’s global business leader for water security; Dr Paul Wilkinson, principal water resources engineer; Peter Von Lany, technical leader - strategic water management; and researchers Lauren Mittiga and Rob Porter.