Introducing Cambridge Prisms Water: Solutions for managing an essential resource and critical hazard

Abstract

Water is a vital resource essential for both sustaining life and a healthy environment as well as being a critical hazard in the form of floods or droughts which can destroy people’s livelihoods and property. This gives rise to a multi-faceted set of concerns and issues that affect everybody. For example, when contaminated with pathogens, wastewater can carry and rapidly transmit disease. The global distribution of freshwater is uneven and the problems this creates are likely to get worse due to climate change and the uncertainties associated with changing rainfall patterns and the emergence of more extreme weather events. Water has been described as the “new oil,” with potential conflicts arising out of disputed access to scarce water resources in the rest of this century. Billions of people around the world still do not have access to adequate safe water supplies or basic sanitation facilities, so in bringing basic water services to all there is much still to be done.