The water you drink today has likely been around in one form or another since dinosaurs
roamed the Earth, hundreds of millions of years ago.
While the amount of freshwater on the planet has remained fairly constant over
time—continually recycled through the atmosphere and back into our cups—the population
has exploded. This means that every year competition for a clean, copious supply of water
for drinking, cooking, bathing, and sustaining life intensifies.
Water scarcity is an abstract concept to many and a stark reality for others. It is the result of
myriad environmental , political, economic, and social forces.
Freshwater makes up a very small fraction of all water on the planet. While nearly 70 percent
of the world is covered by water, only 2.5 percent of it is fresh. The rest is saline and
oceanbased.
Even then, just 1 percent of our freshwater is easily accessible, with much of it
trapped in glaciers and snowfields. In essence, only 0.007 percent of the planet's water is
available to fuel and feed its 6.8 billion people.
Due to geography, climate, engineering, regulation, and competition for resources, some
regions seem relatively flush with freshwater, while others face drought and debilitating
pollution. In much of the developing world, clean water is either hard to come by or a
commodity that requires laborious work or significant currency to obtain.
Water Is Life
Wherever they are, people need water to survive. Not only is the human body 60 percent
water, the resource is alsyo essential for producing food, clothing, and computers, moving
our waste stream, and keeping us and the environment healthy.
Unfortunately, humans have proved to be inefficient water users. (The average hamburger
takes 2,400 liters, or 630 gallons, of water to produce, and many waterintensive
crops, such
as cotton, are grown in arid regions.)
According to the United Nations, water use has grown at more than twice the rate of population
increase in the last century. By 2025, an estimated 1.8 billion people will live in areas plagued by
water scarcity, with twothirds
of the world's population living in waterstressed
regions as a result
of use, growth, and climate change.
The challenge we face now is how to effectively conserve, manage, and distribute the water
we have. National Geographic's Freshwater Web site encourages you to explore the local
stories and global trends defining the world's water crisis. Learn where freshwater resources
exist; how they are used; and how climate, technology, policy, and people play a role in both
creating obstacles and finding solutions. Peruse the site to learn how you can make a
difference by reducing your water footprint and getting involved with local and global water
conservation and advocacy efforts.
Clean, safe drinking water is scarce. Today, nearly 1 billion people in the developing world
don't have access to it. Yet, we take it for granted, we waste it, and we even pay too much to
drink it from little plastic bottles.
Water is the foundation of life. And still today, all around the world, far too many people
spend their entire day searching for it.
In places like subSaharan
Africa, time lost gathering water and suffering from waterborne
diseases is limiting people's true potential, especially women and girls.
Education is lost to sickness. Economic development is lost while people merely try to
survive. But it doesn't have to be like this. It's needless suffering.
It's hard for most of us to imagine that clean, safe water is not something that can be taken
for granted. But, in the developing world, finding a reliable source of safe water is often
timeconsuming
and expensive. This is known as economic scarcity. Water can be found...it
simply requires more resources to do it.
In other areas, the lack of water is a more profound problem. There simply isn't enough. That
is known as physical scarcity.
The problem of water scarcity is a growing one. As more people put everincreasing
demands on limited supplies, the cost and effort to build or even maintain access to water
will increase. And water's importance to political and social stability will only grow with the
crisis
The Delhi government Thursday urged residents to stock up on water as large parts of the
capital are likely to face serious water shortage in the next few days due to decline in
production by Wazirabad and Chandrawal water treatment plants (WTPs).
“Due to a decline in the water level in Wazirabad pond, which gets water from Yamuna, and
reduced supply in the cement line canal, part of Munak canal, the production of water at the
WTPs has gone down by more than 50 per cent,” said a senior official of the Delhi Jal Board
(DJB).
The crisis is expected to affect north Delhi, northwest Delhi, central tDelhi and parts of west
and south Delhi. The areas that will be hit include Old Delhi, Civil Lines, Patel Nagar,
Rajendra Nagar, Model Town, Mukherjee Nagar.
“ The Chandrawal plant gets around 80 cusecs of water from Wazirabad pond, but… we
have not been able to get that…,” said DJB CEO Keshav Chandra.
Water Minister Kapil Mishra said, “The situation is not out of control so far. Normal operation
at these plants should resume in a day or two. Water will be supplied Friday but at lower
pressure. We urge residents to conserve water,” he said
Over two thirds of Earth's surface is covered by water; less than a third is taken up by land.
As Earth's population continues to grow, people are putting everincreasing
pressure on the
planet's water resources. In a sense, our oceans, rivers, and other inland waters are being
"squeezed" by human activities—not so they take up less room, but so their quality is
reduced. Poorer water quality means water pollution.
We know that pollution is a human problem because it is a relatively recent development in
the planet's history: before the 19th century Industrial Revolution, people lived more in
harmony with their immediate environment. As industrialization has spread around the globe,
so the problem of pollution has spread with it. When Earth's population was much smaller,
no one believed pollution would ever present a serious problem. It was once popularly
believed that the oceans were far too big to pollute. Today, with around 7 billion people on
the planet, it has become apparent that there are limits. Pollution is one of the signs that
humans have exceeded those limits.
How serious is the problem? According to the environmental campaign organization WWF:
"Pollution from toxic chemicals threatens life on this planet. Every ocean and every
continent, from the tropics to the oncepristine
polar regions, is contaminated."
Water pollution can be defined in many ways. Usually, it means one or more substances
have built up in water to such an extent that they cause problems for animals or people.
Oceans, lakes, rivers, and other inland waters can naturally clean up a certain amount of
pollution by dispersing it harmlessly. If you poured a cup of black ink into a river, the ink
would quickly disappear into the river's much larger volume of clean water. The ink would
still be there in the river, but in such a low concentration that you would not be able to see it.
At such low levels, the chemicals in the ink probably would not present any real problem.
However, if you poured gallons of ink into a river every few seconds through a pipe, the river
would quickly turn black. The chemicals in the ink could very quickly have an effect on the
quality of the water. This, in turn, could affect the health of all the plants, animals, and
humans whose lives depend on the river.
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