Sustainable Construction, 5th Edition

Chapter 10Built Environment Hydrologic Cycle

Water is arguably the most critical resource needed for creating a sustainable built environment. In his book The Bioneers, Kenny Ausubel (1997) noted that biologists occasionally refer to this resource as “Cleopatra's water” because, like all other materials on the planet, water stays in a closed loop. The water you sip from a drinking fountain may have once been used by the Egyptian queen in her bath. The human body is 97 percent water, and water is more crucial to survival than food. It serves as a buffer in human metabolism for the transfer of oxygen at small scale, as a damper on rapid changes in the planet's environment at large scale, and as a shock absorber in cellular function at microscopic scale. Water plays a role in most of the world's spiritual traditions and religions, from baptism in the Christian faiths, to sweat lodges in Native American rituals, to the cleanliness traditions of the Baha'i faith. Water is the source of life for both humans and other species, yet it also has the power to destroy. It is used as a metaphor for truth and as a symbol for redemption and the washing away of sin. Water serves as habitat for a substantial fraction of Earth's living organisms, and the remainder are totally dependent on it for their survival.

Despite water's symbolic and practical values, water resources throughout the planet are badly stressed. On July 28, 2010, the United Nations passed a resolution affirming the right of ...