Water Utilization
On the Way to Cheaper H20
Post-Purification Lifestyle
Why Should We Care?
Approximately 12,500 cubic km1 of water is available globally for human use every year. While global demand is only around 4,430 cubic km 2, considerably less than the supply, the avialable water is georaphically and seasonally distributed in such a way that large populations of the world are unable to fully utilize their supply and are experiencing severe water shortages.
source. [click picture to enlarge]
Due to this uneven distribution, and the severe pollution of the water that is available, 1 billion of the world’s 6.7 billion residents do not have access of safe drinking water. A further 2.4 billion lack adequate sanitation, and 15% of the global population is malnourished due to insufficient water for agriculture.1 As we can see from the above map, the majority of the people that lack water access to freshwater reside in large parts of Asia and Africa.
Taking into account population growth, climate patterns, and development, this problem is likely to worsen in the coming decades, with the percentage of the world’s population that is under water stress rising from “34% in 1994 to 63% in 2025.”1 If no alternative solutions are developed to meet the rising water demands, by 2020 as many as 135 million people could die from preventable water-related diseases.3
Disease is not the only problem that the world will have to worry about as water becomes more scarce. Water wars may become common place especially around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which Syria, Turkey, and Iraq all depend on. By 2025, military action in the Middle East over oil may take a backseat to wars over control of the few rivers that breath life into an otherwise arid region.source
In 2000, realizing the seriousness of the situation, the United Nations set a two-fold target for global water access:
1) Halve the number of people that lack access to safe and affordable drinking water.
2) Develop sustainable water management systems on regional, national, and local levels.
Unfortunately, even if these goals are achieved 34-76 million people will still die of water-related dieases, but the UN’s goals are a step in the right direction, and this section of the website will explore the ways in which the targets can be achieved.3
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