IT IS a sobering thought. The water in the Olympic swimming pool making a splash in Athens this week would irrigate enough crops to feed only one person for a year. No wonder the world is running dry. Worse, we are confronted by a startling new revelation: hydrologists have completely miscalculated how much water will be available in future to irrigate crops. It is a mistake that threatens to wreck hundreds of irrigation systems across the globe, cause new famines and waste billions of dollars of precious investment capital.
Natural water systems are already in crisis. Some of the world’s…
