Diapo

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Intro

97% of scientists working on global climate change think that earth is warming up because
of human activities.
What is the impact on climate of human being ?

We can already observe that the planet is getting warmer. According to most of the
projections, it should go on this way, as we can now see on this planisphere.
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The Greenhouse effect : when earth receives energy from the sun, its surface re-radiates
thermal radiations but greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide or methane retain a part of
these infrared radiations and send them back to the soil. This contributes to warm earth up.
Actually, its this particular point thats mostly impacted by human activities : oil and gas
combustion, deforestation, intensive agriculture. Since industrial revolution, humans
activities spread a lot of gases, mainly carbon dioxide and methane. This gases
accumulate in the atmosphere and from now reach record levels.

For instance, CO2 concentration went from two hundred and seventy ppm at the end of the
nineteenth century to four hundred ppm today. Its the highest concentration since eight
hundred thousand years at least.
As a consequence the greenhouse effect is intensifying. Overage of energy that is
introduced by humans into climate machine today, its approximately of three atomic
bombs exploding every seconds and consequences are dramatics.

[A complter : texte crit sur feuille]

Reunion Island, due to its geographic situation and particular relief, has two very different
sides :

- East coast, very exposed to alizes winds and clouds is also very wet : it holds the rain
world record with 6 meters of rain per square meter a year in some parts !

- West coast, protected by the mountains, is much dryer.

This particular situation has a clear impact on the water management issue.
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Rien.

As you can see, the population is increasing quite rapidly in our island, for birth rate
remains at a high level.

Several scenarios can be made, depending on the possible evolutions of birth rate in the
coming years.

In the worst one, population could go on increasing as it's been doing until today, and we
could reach 1,1 million inhabitants in 2030.

This will of course have a direct impact on water consuming and increasing need of this
resource.
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You can notice that temperatures in our island are slightly increasing, like in many parts
of the world.

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And this map shows us that rainfall has a slight tendency to decrease.

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In Reunion island, we consume much more water per inhabitant than in Continental
France.
Yes, we're a tropical country, and people are used to taking shower twice a day.

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We do have a problem.

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But keep cool.

We also have solutions.

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First, we have many surface and underground sources and reserves of water.

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A system has been built in order to take water from the eastern part of the island, very wet
as we've seen, to the western coast.

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It's been quite a work !

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It's allowed to develop sugar cane culture in former dry sites.

And liberated drinkable water for domestic use.

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But that doesn't mean efforts aren't still to be made in order to save more water in our
everyday life.

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And maintenance of the piping system is very important too.

For example, 46% of the water is lost in tubes leaks, in Saint-Denis, the main town of the
island, according to a study made in this year !

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In conclusion, in La Runion, we have our geographical, economical and demographic

particularities.

But we'll have to face the same problems and work in the same direction than anyone else
in the world.
Like you all, guys !!