Water scarcity doesn’t get a lot of attention in western society, at least not nearly as much as it should. It takes a distant back seat to things like whatever craziness Trump did lately or which celebrity did what with their penis. Yet the world’s water woes are far more serious and far more threatening to the welfare of our children and future generations than most of the other nonsense you’ll see on the news.
The world is rapidly running out of water. This might seem absurd on a planet with two-thirds of its surface covered in water, but only a tiny portion of that water is fresh and drinkable. Around 97.4% of the water on the planet is saltwater, which can’t be used to drink or irrigate crops without the aid of expensive, energy-intensive desalinization methods. Of the 2.6% of freshwater that remains, most is locked up in the form of inaccessible glacial ice sheets, many of which will eventually melt into the ocean, or in pockets that are buried too far underground to access.
Only 0.04% of the earth’s total volume of water exists in a form that is readily available to humans: rainfall, water vapor, lakes, streams, and underground aquifers. To put this number in perspective, if you represented the world’s water supply with 10 gallon-jugs of water, the amount available for human use would be equivalent to just a teaspoon of that. (Miller, 2004)
Freshwater, just like other natural resources, is unevenly distributed across the globe. Canada has just 0.5% of the world’s population, but possesses 20% of the world’s usable freshwater. In China the situation is reversed: The country holds 24% of the world’s population but contains just 7% of the water supply. (Miller, 2004, p. 307) India is in a similar predicament. And much as is the case with oil, access to this precious resource often spells the difference between the haves and have-not’s.
Humans obtain their water from 3 main sources: Freshwater lakes, rivers and streams, and underground aquifers. All three of these sources face a serious sustainability crisis. “Despite its importance, water is one of our most poorly managed resources,” says G. Tyler Miller Jr. “We waste it and pollute it. We also charge too little for making it available.” (Miller, 2004, p. 306)
Throughout the world, humans are consuming this precious resource at wildly unsustainable rates. “More than half of the earth’s largest aquifers have exceeded tipping points, according to a 2015 study by NASA satellite data,” notes Erica Gies (2017, p. 51). Lakes and rivers are being drained far faster than they can replenish themselves, and climate change is further accelerating the problem. Many once-mighty rivers no longer reach the sea, and lakes around the world are being reduced to muddy puddles.
“Lake Chad in Africa has shrunk to a sliver of its former self since the 1960s, heightening shortages of fish and irrigation water,” writes Kenneth Weiss (2018). Among the Yellow River in China and the Indus in Pakistan, only 10% of the river actually reaches the shore. For the Colorado River, that figure is well under 10%, and that comes during brief periods only (PBS, 9-13-2017). For most of the year, its outlet into the Pacific Ocean is dry.
Cape Town in Africa is severely short on water, and Brazil is suffering through its worst water shortage in 80 years. (Scientific American, 2018) Northern china has outgrown its available water supply, with a population that uses more water than the region can deliver. The situation in India is especially dire. Half the country’s population – or around 600 million people – live in areas where water resources are highly or extremely stressed. By 2030, demand for water is expected to be double the country’s supply. (Agarwal & Pokharel, 7-8-2019)
“In China, deep aquifers are dropping rapidly,” reports John Macionis. “In the Middle East, water supply is reaching a critical level. Iran is rationing water in its capital city. In Egypt, people can consume just one-sixth as much water from the Nile River today as in 1900. …In the Tamil Nadu region of Southern India…people were drawing so much groundwater that the local water table has fallen 100 feet over the last several decades. Mexico City–which has pumped so much water from its underground aquifer that the city has sunk 30 feet in the past century and continues to drop about 2 inches per year.” (Macionis, 2004, p. 473)
The numbers vary slightly depending on who’s doing the reporting, but all of them paint a rather bleak picture.
During most of the 20th century, only 14% of the global population lived under scarce water conditions, defined as insufficient water to provide for human needs. Today that number stands at 60%, due to a combination of population growth and dwindling supplies. According to the nonprofit group The Nature Conservancy, more than half the world’s cities now experience regular water shortages. (Patterson, 6-6-2019)
The United Nations estimates that by 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population could be living in water stressed areas. (Chakravorty, 2017) Nearly 2 1/2 billion people already live in places where human demand for water exceeds the supply. (Weiss, 2018) And we haven’t even yet gotten to the really serious problems in most areas of the globe.
UN Analysts project that up to 7 billion people across more than 60 nations will face water scarcity in the next half-century. (Sawin, 2003) “There’s not enough fresh water to handle nine billion people at current consumption levels,” says Patricia Malroy of the Water Research Foundation. (Zielinski, 2010)
Yet water shortages aren’t merely a problem of population. Drinking, washing and bathing make up only a tiny fraction of the overall water equation. The real problem resides in water consumed for capitalist pursuits. Most of this water is being used by farming, ranching, and industrial operations. Corporations come into an area and drain water supplies in the pursuit of profit, leaving local citizens high and dry.
Water scarcity causes a cascading effect of consequences that extend well beyond people going thirsty or having to organize their lives around water. Everything in our modern world is dependent upon water. It’s used to produce electricity and to produce the food we eat. It’s used in every manufacturing process you could name. It’s necessary for mining and fracking operations. There isn’t a single part of our modern economy that isn’t dependent upon water.
In 2002 the World Bank warned that water scarcity would soon become a major headwind to economic growth and development. Another joint report that same year by the International Food Policy Research Institute and the International Water Management Institute predicted a loss of 350 million metric tons of food production by 2025. To put this in perspective, that’s slightly more than the entire U.S. grain crop. “Unless we change policies and priorities,” says lead author Mark Rosegrant, “in 20 years, there won’t be enough water for cites, households, the environment, or growing food. Water is not like oil. There is no substitute. If we continue to take it for granted, much of the earth is going to run short of water or food–or both.” (Miller, 2004, p. 310)