What if our administrative boundaries were dependent on ecological boundaries? When freshwater becomes increasingly scarce, could we use watersheds as boundaries to better administer the distribution of water resources? Climate change, urbanization, and pollution from industrial and agricultural development threaten the steady supply of freshwater to the Pearl River Delta and its cities, while population growth in the region only increases demand. At the same time, Hong Kong and Shenzhen's increasing economic, political and cultural interdependency presents the possibility to tackle these challenges holistically, piggybacking new systems for freshwater delivery onto defunct, existing, and planned infrastructure in the region. To address the challenges of freshwater provision in the region, we propose a zone of interconnected water resources: the Pearl River Delta Special Ecological Area (PRD SEA). It adopts four water resource strategies: move from a centralized to a decentralized system; link independent systems to enable resource sharing; piggyback new systems on defunct, existing and planned infrastructure; and finally treat "waste" water as a resource. The PRD SEA imagines a fundamental realignment of water resources from a centralized, source-to-user system, to one that is distributed and interdependent, relying on a user-as-source network. Traditionally, the collection and storage of fresh water, the distribution of potable water, and treatment of resulting waste ...

• published: 01 Feb 2012
• views: 184
• author: Stefan Al