BGA/2/19
Sponsored by Andrew Murphy, Connor Parton, Sir Lalitesh Inampudi, David Hardy of Franklin High School
The delegates above represented the Delegation of Barbados.
This legislation was filed in the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural category
Presented as part of the MUN B 2023 conference
| 1 | Aware of the fact the UN stated “countries with less than 1000 cubic meters of renewable water |
| 2 | resources are considered water scarce,” |
| 3 | |
| 4 | Aware of the fact that Barbados has been ranked the 15 most water-scarce countries with a per |
| 5 | capita water availability of 306 cubic meters per year and of the 37 countries that the World |
| 6 | Resources Institute has identified as having “extremely high” levels of water stress, seven are |
| 7 | from the Caribbean: Dominica, Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, |
| 8 | Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados and St. Kitts and Nevis. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | Deeply concerned about the fact droughts have affected education. “What was happening at |
| 11 | schools is that once the water was cut, they would have to send school children home,” says Ms. |
| 12 | Hughes, “because you cannot operate without water,” |
| 13 | |
| 14 | Deeply concerning that the renewable water resources per capita in Barbados have decreased from |
| 15 | 294.7 in 2002 to 280 in 2017. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | Acknowledging that the Barbados water agency/BWA has taken multiple steps to help the situation |
| 18 | including putting multiple policies in place to decrease water use, and trying to reuse and replenish |
| 19 | current water sources. |
| 20 | |
| 21 | Aware of the fact that even though BWA has taken these measures they are not having a drastic |
| 22 | improvement in Barbados water scarcity situation. This can be seen in multiple water shortages for |
| 23 | example when a drought occurred in Barbados between 2019-2020 causing shortages in the |
| 24 | majority of Barbados. |
| 25 | |
| 26 | The General Assembly hereby: |
| 27 | |
| 28 | Supports the idea that Barbados built a desalination plant to produce enough water for the entire |
| 29 | country. For the desalination plant to produce enough water for the entire country it needs to |
| 30 | produce 11,280,000 gallons of water using the fact the Barbados water agency estimated a person |
| 31 | uses 40 gallons of water in a day and the population of Barbados is 282,000. |
| 32 | |
| 33 | Draws attention to the fact multiple desalination plants make more than 11 million gallons of water |
| 34 | a day for example the Sorek 2 desalination plant in Israel makes 150 million gallons of water a |
| 35 | day. This shows the capability of desalination plants to make enough water for the people of |
| 36 | Barbados to drink and use for daily use. |
| 37 | Accepts the fact that 266,772 kWh is necessary to make 11,280,000 gallons of water a day since |
| 38 | making 1 gallon of water requires .02365 kWh of electricity and this is calculated using the fact the |
| 39 | range of 2.25 - to 10 kWh per cubic meter of water produced in a reverse osmosis desalination |
| 40 | plants and 2.25 to 10 kWh is the widely cited estimate within the water desalination. |
| 41 | |
| 42 | Draw attention to the fact that desalination plants are known to use up large amounts of energy. |
| 43 | This desalination plant will require 97.37 gigawatt hours of electricity in 1 year while Barbados |
| 44 | produces around 900 gigawatt hours of electricity. This is around 11 percent of the total energy |
| 45 | output and can be a problem for the country. But using Cogeneration (Combined Heat and Power) |
| 46 | to utilize the capture of the waste heat generated and reuse this waste energy. This can decrease |
| 47 | the total power used by 20-30 percent (estimate based on industry knowledge of combined heat |
| 48 | and power systems) and decrease the energy consumption from 97.37 gigawatts hours to 73.02 |
| 49 | gigawatts hours. Then the desalination plants will only require 8 percent of the total electricity |
| 50 | produced. |
| 51 | |
| 52 | Calls upon the UN to help fund this project by giving 75 million dollars to build the desalination |
| 53 | plant for hiring people, buying infrastructure, land cost, supporting facilities, and desalination plant |
| 54 | technology. This will not only effect Barbados with water scarcity but will also increase the |
| 55 | economy greatly because people are required to build and maintain a desalination plant and one of |
| 56 | the big reasons that tourists are not going to Barbados is the inadequacy and reliability of |
| 57 | freshwater supply. This will also help surrounding countries because Barbados could share water |
| 58 | with surrounding nations which are also facing water scarcity and reduce stress on freshwater |
| 59 | sources. |
| 60 | |
| 61 |