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The United Nations forecasts that by 2030, nearly half of the world's population will be living in areas of "high water stress". Climate change will cause droughts in some areas, and floods in others, scientists say. In Africa alone, between 75 million and 250 million people may experience increased water stress due to climate change by 2020, according to a UN report out last week. Areas of very dry land have more than doubled since the 1970s, and more intense droughts have been seen over the last 10 years.
Water scarcity will see as many as 700 million people displaced, the report warns. Rising demand for energy and meat will also exacerbate water shortages - it takes four times more water to produce a kilo of beef than a kilo of wheat.
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The UN figures indicates that, with a
billion plus people worldwide living in areas where water is in short
supply and more than a third of the global population lacking
sanitation facilities. The rate is which global water consumption is
rising - more than twice as fast as the rate of population growth.
Diminishing water supplies are clearly due to the contamination of
water ways and underground water by untreated sewage and waste water
discharge by enterprises and urban drainage system. At this rate,
the World Bank estimates that three billion people will not get any
safe drinking water by 2035.
It is still not too late to switch alternative
technology like low-flush toilets or improved pit latrines,
recycling of water, waste water treatment etc. Water
conservation must also be practiced more efficiently in the fields,
using drip irrigation to ensure all the water gets to the crops.
Even sewage water could be treated with soda to recycle it and
irrigate crops like cotton while water from domestic uses could
irrigate vegetable beds. The planner should also consider using
technology to exploit the country's long coastline so that saline
water could be made portable.
WATER WARS
In the future it will be
water wars as the scarcity of water has inflamed existing conflicts. Nearly four billion people live in countries where there is serious political tension over lakes and rivers that cross international borders. Current hotspots include India and Bangladesh; the Middle East; and China and its neighbours.
According to Fred Pearce, author of the book When The Rivers Run Dry, water is one of the defining crises of the 21st century. "As more and more countries run short of water, the threat of wars over water will grow," he warns..
Recently an award-winning new film, Blue Gold: World Water Wars, gets its Scottish premiere at Strathclyde University. Its publicity material asks: "Past civilisations have
collapsed from poor water management. Can the human race survive?"
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