My Category: Climate Change

Topic: Water Crisis

Below is some research I did on the water crisis forecasted for the future. Included are some very interesting facts and also some links to websites that I looked at as part of my research on this area:

• More than 2.7 billion people will face severe water shortages by the year 2025 if the world continues consuming water at the same rate, the United Nations has warned

• The UN body says wasted water is costing Europe around $10bn a year

• at least 120 million people living in Europe - one in seven of the population - still do not have access to clean water and sanitation

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/1887451.stm

• Within 25 years, half the world’s population could have trouble finding enough freshwater for drinking and irrigation

• Nevertheless, one in six people still have no regular access to safe drinking water

• The cost of providing safe drinking water and proper sanitation to everyone in the world by 2025 will be US$180 billion a year, two to three times greater than present investments

• On average, individual daily domestic use of freshwater in developed countries is 10 times more than in developing countries. In the UK the average person uses 135 litres of water every day. In the developing world the average person uses 10 litres

• On current trends, over the next 20 years humans will use 40 per cent more water than they do now

• Water problems are more related to mismanagement than scarcity.

http://www.unep.org/wed/2003/keyfacts.htm

• Already one person in five has no access to safe drinking water

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/world/2000/world_water_crisis/default.stm

• As WWF's new report on the UK's water usage explains today, virtual water is the volume of water that is required to produce a particular product. A can of fizzy drink might contain 0.35 litres of water, for instance, yet it also requires around 200 litres to grow and process the sugar that goes into it. A pair of leather shoes may contain no water at all, but it requires 8,000 litres to grow the feed, support the cow and then process its skin before you start wearing the shoes. Add all this virtual water together and you have a water footprint for a person, a business, a community or a country

• a typical British household uses 30 times as much virtual water as the amount it obtains through the taps for washing, cooking or drinking.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/20/water.food

• The UK has become the sixth largest net importer of water in the world

• Average household water use for washing and drinking in the UK is about 150 litres a person daily, but we consume about 30 times as much in "virtual water", used in the production of imported food and textiles;

• Different diets have different water footprints. A meat and dairy-based diet consumes about 5,000 litres of virtual water a day while a vegetarian diet uses about 2,000 litres

Other Reading:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/aug/20/water.food1

http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/UnitedKingdom

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2008/aug/19/water.food?picture=336718164