New schemes and paradigms about the best use of water are forming over many countries of the world, including Mexico. Facing the growing need for quality and sanity service that is demanded for a humanity which by 2050 will be 9 billion inhabitants.

A high percentage of clean water that is available, is involved in different uses: agricultural, urban and industrial in much of the world. Is a great challenge for science, technology, resources, and volition of goverments heed this new demands.

It is certain that 25 percent of the world´s population lives in countries where 80 percent of the available water of all the hydrological basins and underground aquifers is already used, while the economic resources allocated by governments in expanding infrastructure and designing new alternatives are insufficient.

Dr. Fernando González Villareal who has been in important positions on water management, incluiding founder and managing director of the National Water Commission, principal advisor on the subject of the World Bank, and currently General Coordinator of the water Network of the UNAM, tell us: “The 25 percent proportion that is equivalent to one in four inhabitants of the world lives in areas of great stress. That is, the use of around 80 percent of the hydraulic potential, is almost a limit, because the rest corresponds to recurrent droughts and floods, which prevent the full use of the resource, ”he said.

In terms of distribution and assortment of water for different uses in the future, new concepts and definitions have emerged: there is talk of “stress”, “reallocation” and “reconcession”.

He said that in countries and regions where there is significant water strees-for about more than 80 percent-. “One use would have to be canceled, to transfer it to another” he said,

In this context, is necessary to reallocate, redistribute the water, to meet these demands of current times.

He add that “in our contry near of the half of its territory, we are alredy in extreme stress. In this circumstance it costs us a lot of work to continue doing hydraulic works in the same way they were built, for example, in the 1980s”.

It should be noted that a very important part of the national water available for build dams and organize irrigation districts has already been occupied. Another important part that we should not neglect in hydraulic matters for the near future, is to better manage the infrastructure we already have. Because it is getting old.

That infrastructure in high percentage needs rehabilitation or, being stricter, would be a modernization and adaptation. “It is necessary to channel increasing budgetary resources, in the face of new conditions of scarcity and increasing demand; new conditions of climate change. Certainly there is a very great need for many things”. (Second part will continue: “Water in the Tropic of Mexico).

Pascacio Taboada Cortina. Cell phone: 55 16 49 23 34