ZEMCH 2015 - International Conference Proceedings | Page 204

In 2011, London Mayor Boris Johnson called for the resurrection of a 1942 plan to build a canal from
the “Scottish borders to the South East” in the Daily Telegraph. “Since Scotland and Wales are on
the whole higher up than England, it is surely time to do the obvious; use the principle of gravity
to bring surplus rain from the mountains to irrigate and refresh the breadbasket of the country
in the South and East,” he writes. After considering such an option, so far the cost is way too high.
For an island country, one obvious suggestion is desalination, which means drinking water would
come from salt water, after being processed. There is an example that has opened in London
(2010); the Thames Water has initiated this large desalination plant. It was first initiated to safeguard against water shortages, after 2005 and 2006, and it can supply 400,000 homes or 1 million
people with water. Water stress areas are shown in Figure 10.

Figure 10: Areas of relative water stress (EA 2007)
Desalination remains a “very expensive, very power hungry” process, (Barford and Everitt 2012).
Furthermore, all the salt and brine resulting from such a process would become an increasing
burden. Another suggested solution is stabilizing population, to limit the growth in demand on
water, reducing immigration, especially to the south east of England, and encouraging long-term
population transfer from parts of the UK like the South East of England that suffer shortages to
other parts, like the North West or Scotland, that are less vulnerable.
Transportation
Private vehicles are the main concern contributing the largest share of air pollution from transport, and causing the most congestion and inconvenience in the streets, there is a plan to build
some infrastructure that will support green electrical cars in the UK, and that has been backed
with a government grant of up to £5000 towards electric vehicles that achieve certain protection
and performance criteria (Clarke 2010).
Highlighting the role of public transport, especially buses, “the Department for Transport is sup-

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ZEMCH 2015 | International Conference | Bari - Lecce, Italy