|  | Workers carrying water across a dried-out reservoir in Chennai. Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty |
| The wars of tomorrow will be fought for water | Most people assume the wars of the 21st century will be fought over rare earth metals, says Peter Frankopan in UnHerd. In fact, civilisation's most important resource is its oldest: water. And the signs are bad. A landmark report published by the UN last month concluded that we have entered a period of "global water bankruptcy", in which societies live beyond their hydrological means. Three quarters of the world's population live in countries classed as "water-insecure", 3.5 billion people experience "severe water stress" at least one month a year, and half the world's 100 biggest cities are in areas of "high water stress". Urban planners increasingly fret about "day zero": the moment the taps simply run dry. | In recent years, Cape Town, Tehran, São Paulo and Istanbul have all experienced "genuine crisis". In 2019, the nine million residents of Chennai in India had to queue for a small daily ration of water brought in by trucks. Less far-flung places – Los Angeles, New York, London – aren't immune. Last year, Environment Secretary Steve Reed warned that without a "major infrastructure overhaul" Britain could run out of clean drinking water by 2035. The reasons are obvious: the global population has doubled since 1970, over which time the world has rapidly urbanised. And a single data centre can gobble up millions of litres a day, equivalent to the needs of tens of thousands of households a year. There's also geopolitics: the Chinese have built a dam a day since 1949, utterly transforming Asia's rivers; dams in the Indus Valley and in northeast Africa are creating tension, sometimes violence, between upriver and downriver nations. Technology and better water pricing may help, but this is ultimately a problem that cannot be solved. There is nothing so foundational to civilisation as water. |
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| | | | THE GOTHIC HALL Bretforton Hall in Worcestershire is a Grade II-listed late 18th-century home full of "gothic-style" features, says The Times. On the ground floor are a kitchen, two sitting rooms, a dining room, a vaulted ballroom, a studio space, a boot room and a utility, as well as a bar within the crenellated tower. Upstairs are the six bedrooms, four of which have en-suite bathrooms, as well as a family bathroom and an office. The property is set within two acres of gardens. Honeybourne is a four-minute drive, with trains to London in two hours. £2.3m. Click on the image to see the listing. |
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