The Romans developed networks of trade and food supply that enabled them to escape local water constraints. Fertile regions such as southern Spain or Italy’s Po valley would grow lots of food and ship it back to Rome or to the drier outposts of the Empire. Embedded within this is a what geographers call a virtual water trade – an indirect way of shifting this precious resource from wetter, less populated areas to those regions with more people or a less consistent climate. Does this sound uncomfortably familiar? In the next 30 years we are facing a critical combination of inter-related stresses on the core resources that keep our civilisation running. As it happens, the Romans gave us a word for that too – the “food-water-energy nexus” (from the Latin nectere, to bind together).
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 09:29:49 +0000
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