Current State of Water Scarcity:
According to a newly published book, unconventional water sources can help beat global water scarcity.
- The book was compiled by experts at the United Nations University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), UNU Institute for Integrated Management of Material Fluxes and of Resources and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.
- Conventional water sources which rely on snowfall, rainfall and rivers – are not enough to meet growing freshwater demand in water-scarce areas.
Current State of Water Scarcity:
- Only 3% of the world’s water is freshwater, and two-thirds of that is tucked away in frozen glaciers or otherwise unavailable for our use.
- As many as 87 countries are projected to become water-scarce by 2050.
- One in four people on Earth face shortages of water for drinking, sanitation, agriculture and economic development.
- Water scarcity is expected to intensify in regions like the Middle East and North Africa region, which has 6% of the global population but only 1% of the world’s freshwater resources.
- India: Although India has 16% of the world’s population, the country possesses only 4% of the world’s freshwater resources.
- In recent times, the water crisis in India has become very critical, affecting millions of people across India.
- As many as 256 of 700 districts in India have reported ‘critical’ or ‘overexploited’ groundwater levels according to the most recent Central Ground Water Board data (from 2017).
- Three-fourths of India’s rural families lack access to piped, drinkable water and must rely on unsafe sources.
- India has become the world’s largest extractor of groundwater, accounting for 25% of the total. Some 70% of our water sources are contaminated and our major rivers are dying because of pollution.
