There is a saying “If there’s no water, no life”. The water
crisis is becoming a global issue day by day. An estimated 844 million people do
not get hygienic water worldwide.It means out of 10 people only one person gets
the hygienic water.If things remain the same the world will face an extreme
water crisis in less than 30 years.
Following are the major reasons of water scarcity:
CAUSES:
GLOBAL WARMING:
Global warming is the major and main reason of water shortage. Due to global
warming air temperature becomes warmer, and our rivers and lakes evaporates
rapidly. It would lead us to water scarcity. As we all know that everyone is
dependent on water for their living, eating, thirsting surely, we will suffer a
lot due to water scarcity. We have to work on these factor.
WATER POLLUTION:
Water pollution occurs due to multiple factors, as pollution dissolves in water
easily as compare to other liquids. It occurs due to harmful substances and
fertilizers from farms. There are 3 major types of water pollution named
groundwater pollution, surface water pollution and ocean water pollution.
AGRICULTURE:
Agriculture is one of the consequence in water scarcity. Agriculture sector
consume 70 percent of world’s fresh water and approximated 60 percent water is
wasted due to leaky and inefficient irrigation system. The wasteful consumption
of water is drying our rivers, lakes and oceans. Countries where economies
heavily dependent on agriculture also faces water scarcity.
POPULATION GROWTH:
In the last 100 years, there is a massive fourfold increase in the population.
This rapid growth affected us in terms of the water crisis. Due to massive
growth in population around the world, our water ecosystem has been converted
and faced a vast amount of loss in biodiversity. 41 percent population of world
lives in under water stress.
DROUGHTS:
Drought is very common in rural areas and the areas who are very hot and dry.
The areas where people do not receive water as their needs and also they do not
receive the sufficient rainfall.
WHAT CAN BE DONE?
Major companies are unable to tackle this, the developed countries need to take
swift action against the shortageand overcome this life threatening issue. Few
countries like, Singapore and Israel efficiently worked on water
recycling.According to international researchers, in the past hundred years, the
population of the world has been increased three times and that’s why the
consumption of water increased six fold. If the present situation continues
there would be a 40 percent gap between the supply of water and the demand of
water by 2030. This increasing consumption of water will become worse than
climate change.
From 2000 to 2017, Governments and organizations had made great progress in
increasing the water access to humans and nature and the number of people take
benefit from it but unfortunately, due to climate change and COVID 19 created
new challenges for us. Some states and organizations still taking good and
efficient steps for their water scarcity that should be model for others.
The betterment of environmental policy is a key strategy for water scarcity. The
ecosystem needs to reconstruct. A better ecosystem will support the ecological
process.
Developed countries need to construct more dams and reservoirs for more control
on water resources. Reservoirs and dams will restore the highest quantity of
water in wet times. Wastewater recycling is also a good step to control water
scarcity. Namibia’s desert has been doing wastewater recyclingfor decades.
In reference to BejaminSovacool, director of the Center for Energy Technology at
Aarhus University:
He said in his three years of research that if we continue to do what we are
doing today than in the year 2040 there would be not enough water in the world
to satisfy the thirst of our population. Furthermore, his report recommended
that our water consume in nuclear, power and coal for cooling motive. He
suggested the alternative of it that it should be replaced by wind and solar,
which use essentially no water.
He also added that “electricity generation from thermoelectric power plants is
inextricably linked to water resources.”
There are many countries that consume water for energy production and energy
production consumes an immense quantity of water. The USA consumed 41 percent of
water for thermoelectric cooling.
Eventually, the world’s scientists warn that we are living in a world where we
have a limited supply of water, we have to choose what to do with this water and
how much to consume this water.
BejaminSovacool said: Do we want to spend it on keeping the power plants going
or as drinking water? We donot have enough water to do both,”
The researchers and scientists suggest some things to make them better and
useful use of accessible water. There must be proper research on usage of water
in power stations and research for shift to substitute cooling system for
nuclear power and investment in solar and wind projects for improvement in
energy efficiency.
"If we keep doing business as usual, we are facing an insurmountable water
shortage – even if water was free, because it's not a matter of the price,”
Sovacool said. “There will no water by 2040 if we keep doing what we're doing
today. There's no time to waste. We need to act now."
The world experts gave 19 solutions for global water crisis:
1. Educate people to change consumption and lifestyles
2. Invent new water saving technologies
3. Recycle waste and dirty water
4. Improve irrigation and agricultural projects
5. Relevantly price the water
6. Develop energy productive purification plants
7. Improve water catching area and harvesting
8. Implement the community-based governance and partnerships
9. Develop and authorize better policies and regulations
10. Comprehensively manage ecosystems
11. Improvement in distribution infrastructure
12. Recoil corporate water impressions
13. Develop international frameworks and institutional cooperation
14. Address the pollution
15. Public common resources
16. R&D / Innovation and take benefit from advance technology
17. Develop countries need to make water projects and transfer with
underdeveloped countries
18. Climate change alleviation
19. Control in population
The study found that if we consider these crucial changes the water scarcity
would be remarkably reduced by year 2050.