Approximately 440 million people in 29 countries are currently facing extreme shortages of water. Twenty percent more water than is now available will be needed to feed the over three billion additional people who are estimated to be living by the year 2025. As much as two-thirds of the world population could be water-stressed by then.Aquifers, which supply one-third of the World's population, are being pumped out faster than nature can replenish them. In 1950, the U.S. took 12 trillion gallons of water from the ground by 1980 the figure more than doubled and is still increasing at an alarming rate. The Ogallala Aquifer is being depleted at a rate of 12 billion cubic meters (420 billion ft3 or 9,729,000 acre feet) per year, amounting to a total depletion to date of a volume equal to the annual flow of 18 Colorado Rivers (Its flow is 4000 cubic feet per second). Half the World's rivers and lakes are seriously polluted. Major rivers, such as the Yangtze, Ganges, and Colorado, no longer flow to the sea for much of the year because of upstream withdrawals.
Where Are the Water-Scarce Regions?
Water is unevenly distributed across the populated regions of the World. It is an irony of geography that two-thirds of the World's population lives in areas that receive only one-quarter of the World's annual rainfall. By contrast the most water-rich areas of the world, such as the Amazon and Congo River Basins, are sparsely populated. Some of the most densely populated regions of the world, such as the Mediterranean, the Middle East, India, and China will face severe water shortages in the coming decades.
Even areas of the United States (particularly the southwest and parts of the midwest) are vulnerable to water shortages, as the media attention to the ongoing drought in California attests. Currently, the San Diego water authority is threatening a moratorium on the use of municipal water for irrigation, washing cars etc.
In 2004, the U.S. Geological Survey was claiming this drought to be "comparable to or more severe than the largest-known drought in 500 years."
With the scarce rainfall received since the early 1990s, plus low snowpack in the Sierra Mountains, which supplies the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta including the Rockies, the source of the Colorado River. All this has created the foundation for "the perfect drought" so serious that it just might reclaim the desert that this area once was. Sadly, this trend is evident in many regions across this country and around the world.
Agriculture In a Water-Starved World
Limited or non-existent water supplies will be the primary obstacle to increased food production in the next few decades. In the past, prior to the onslaught of climate change, most of the increases in agricultural productivity occurred on irrigated lands, since irrigated farmlands are five times more productive than rain-fed. Today, according to Worldwatch, "irrigation-fed agriculture supplies about 45 percent of the World's food supply".
Steadily increasing social problems, combined with current economic trends will compound the severity of the gathering water shortage. Approximately 1.5 billion people lack access to potable water, with more than half the World's population lacking adequate sanitation which jeopardises existing drinking water supplies. Facilities must be developed for the increased population as well as the existing inhabitants, unfortunately this is not currently a priority with the worldwide concerns of the financial markets. Meanwhile, as a result of industrial development and increasing living standards, water use grew at more than twice the rate of population increase during the 20th century and is currently growing exponentially.
Water Equity
With uncontrolled urban sprawl running rampant in the developing world, there is an ever increasing demand for water-intensive agricultural products, such as meat and other animal products. As development progresses, the resulting water demands of the more affluent urban dwellers will divert water from agriculture uses. Consequently, the poor in both rural and out-lying urban areas, are being financially outpaced and ignored by members of the growing middle class, and are increasingly unable to afford and denied their basic God-given water needs. World Hunger reports at present, "more than 1.3 billion people live in abject poverty, earning only a dollar a day or less per person; another 2 billion people are only marginally better off."
World Water Crisis, Who Cares?
The World Bank and the United Nations have commissioned studies and research groups to evaluate current water shortage conditions, determine future requirements, and formulate strategies for solving this seemingly insurmountable water crisis. They have concluded, "that even with major improvements in water collection and distribution (that would provide 70 percent efficiency instead of the current average of 45 percent worldwide), there would still be a need for 20 percent more water, a prediction that has been termed the "world water gap."
Since most of the currently available water sources have already been appropriated (or misappropriated), "there are practical limits to how much additional water can be extracted from the environment." Most experts agree that, even at the current rate at which new water supplies are developed and if sustained over the next few decades, there would still remain serious water shortages by the year 2025.
What About Your Water?
One out of three Americans are sick (colds, flu, sore throat, allergies, high blood pressure, kidney or gull stones, you name it...) and the World Health Organization states that the majority of disease in the world is a result either the water we drink or the lack of sufficient quantities. Since water is the second most important element on earth next to air, should not we take care in its quality? We worry more about our bank book than we do about our health.
Drink clean water ("distilled is as clean as you can get... it is the water I drink"; Dr. Andrew Weil, M.D.) and plenty of it. Americans are dehydrated. They drink anything but clean healthy water. Coffee and carbonated soda dehydrates, not hydrates you. Do yourself a favor and RESEARCH WATER and its relationship to health.
I drink three liters of distilled water per day and fast from 21 to 40 days twice a year and have for over 30 years, and I DO NOT get sick. " A man with experience is not at the mercy of a man with an argument."
