Transporting freshwater

Description

Transporting freshwater involves the organized movement of water from sources of abundance to areas facing scarcity, using pipelines, tankers, canals, or other conveyance systems. This strategy addresses acute water shortages, supports agriculture, sustains populations during droughts, and mitigates the impacts of natural disasters. By ensuring reliable delivery of potable water, it remedies health risks, economic losses, and environmental stress caused by inadequate local water supplies, enabling communities to maintain essential daily and industrial activities.

Implementation

Transporting large quantities of water by tanker has become more common in recent years, as the unit cost of such transport has declined. Moreover, the current glut in the oil market has put a good proportion of the tanker fleet out of operation. These developments have provided an incentive for oil shippers to transport water to arid areas on their return voyages in tankers especially equipped with ballast tanks, but this has still not been done on a long-term or large scale basis.