Almost Half Of Global Population Could Suffer Severe Water Stress By 2030
Almost half of the global population could suffer severe water stress by 2030 if current levels of water consumption and pollution are not immediately addressed.
This is the damning conclusion from a new report published by the International Resource Panel (IRP), entitled Policy Options for Decoupling Economic Growth from Water Use and Water Pollution. Specifically, a combination of continued global population growth, increased urbanization, climate change, and a shift in food consumption, are all likely to impact and increase the future demand of water.
The IRP report points out that current trends unaltered will see water demand exceed supply by 40% in 2030. Accordingly, governments would be forced to spend $200 billion per year on upstream water supply, up from the historic average of $40 to $45 billion.
“Reliable access to clean water is a cornerstone of sustainable development,” said Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
“When clean water is consistently unavailable, the world’s poorest must spend much of their disposable income buying it, or a large amount of time transporting it, which limits development. And since only half of one per cent of the world’s freshwater is available for the needs of both humanity and ecosystems, we will need to do more and better with less if we are to ensure healthy ecosystems, healthy populations and economic development.”
The authors of the report conclude that if the world is to stave off such a drastic outcome, efforts to decouple water use from economic growth will need to be strengthened. This has already shown to be possible in some countries, such as Australia, which saw water consumption decline by 40% between 2001 and 2009 at the same time as the economy grew by 30%.
Specifically, to achieve water decoupling, the IRP recommends:
- Investing more in research and development to improve technology that reduces water waste
- Building sustainable infrastructure to improve the efficiency of water use and eliminate water contamination and pollution
- Introducing policies to curb water demand and re-allocate water to sectors where it produces goods and services most beneficial to society while ensuring vulnerable groups are protected
- Strengthening research into the value of ecosystem services and water to human welfare and economic development
- Doing more to assess “virtual water” (the water used to manufacture goods that are traded internationally), water footprints and related impacts to better understand how international trade patterns could be used to support decoupling where it is most needed
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Let us move that to 2036 and then I agree.
Ugh and with fracking we may be destroying our clean water sources.
This is where locally sourced renewable energy will be invaluable in at least 2 ways-desalination and pumping some of that unused 99.5% of fresh water for consumption.
By then, water recycling and desalination would be the norm.
If someone was willing to pay the desal cost for millions of people who have no money to spend for water.
Those countries which don’t want to deal with refugees would be smart to start making the marginal parts of the world more livable. Otherwise “those people” are going to be crossing their borders.
Are you familiar with the Sahara Forest project? http://saharaforestproject.com/
About 12% of the world’s population, or around 880 million, lack reliable access to safe drinking water. Many people in this group die or suffer disease from drinking contaminated water. Generally these people suffer from economic water shortage. That means they are poor and lack the dams, pipelines, and water and sewage treatment plants we take for granted in developed countries. The good news is this group of people is likely to grow smaller as economic development occurs and population growth rates slow.
About 35% of the world’s population, or about 2.5 billion people lack enough water for adequate sanitation. That is, not enough to flush, not enough to bathe, not enough to dilute contamination to safe levels in rivers, dams, and groundwater. This number is also likely to decline, but some populations are in very difficult positions as they have been using fossil ground water which is running out.
As mentioned in the article, reducing this problem will cost a lot of money, and global warming is basically the human race punching itself in the gonads on this issue and makes things worse and potentially disastrous. (Tasmania normally doesn’t catch on fire from a lack of rain, you know.) But we know what to do to improve things, it’s just a matter of doing it and how many people will die in the meantime.