The Global Water Crisis
The world faces an unprecedented crisis in water resources management, with profound implications for global food security, protection of human health, and maintenance of aquatic ecosystems. Water shortages threaten to reduce global food supply, while the world’s population grows by 80 million people each year. With current trends, by 2025, one-third of all humans will face severe and chronic water shortages. Industrialization, irrigated agriculture, massive urbanization, rising standards of living, and, of course, more people are pushing the demand for freshwater to new heights, undermining already fragile water security for many nations.
Water security is an elusive concept, but consensus is beginning to emerge in the world community as to its dimensions, its parameters, and the best approaches for its achievement. As endorsed by the Second World Water Forum Ministerial Declaration (2000), water security simultaneously considers the need for human access to safe and affordable water for health and well-being, the assurance of economic and political stability, the protection of human populations from the risks of water-related hazards, the equitable and cooperative sharing of water resources, the complete and fair valuation of the resource, and the sustainability of ecosystems at all parts of the hydrologic cycle.
The water crisis is not one of absolute scarcity as much as poor management and inequitable distribution. Regardless of the cause, some regions require particularly urgent action. Of the 48 countries experiencing chronic water shortages (by 2025), 40 are either in the Middle East and North Africa or in sub-Saharan Africa. The 20 countries of the Middle East and North Africa face the worst prospects. Worldwide demand for water tripled during the past century, and is presently doubling every 21 years. Clearly, such demand is unsustainable in the long term and will require dramatic new approaches to water resources management to avoid the worst of the looming crisis.
Some would ask how a planet that has 70 percent of its surface covered with water could face a water crisis. More than 97 percent of that water is ocean water. Of the remaining three percent, about three-quarters is locked away in ice caps or glaciers, and is thus unavailable. In truth, slightly less than one one-hundredth of one percent of the world’s total supply of water is easily accessible as lakes, rivers, and shallow groundwater sources that are renewed by snow and rainfall. Water scarcity is further compounded by the disparity between where human populations are located and when and where rainfall and runoff occurs. Viewed in this manner, 81 percent of total global runoff is within geographic reach for human use, but three-quarters of that comes as floodwater and therefore is not accessible on demand.
Learn more about USAID’s response to the global water crisis.
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