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World water crisis in the offing?
The world is facing a critical shortage of fresh water in the next 2 decades, according to a report from the World Commission on Water. The report, A water-secure world: vision for water, life and the environment, predicts that the use of water will increase by 40% in the next 20 years due to growing demands from agriculture, industry and urban areas. Today, 1 billion people don't have access to safe water and another 2 billion don't have adequate sanitation.The commission, whose sponsors include the World Bank and UN, was created to recommend ways to achieve "global water security." Many countries will be looking to Canada for help, since it is to fresh water what Saudi Arabia is to oil.
About 70% of the world's available water is now used in agriculture and the remaining 30% is used for households and industry. With population growth, the amount used in agriculture alone is expected to increase by 17%. Industry and cities will also require more. This "gloomy arithmetic" adds up to a burgeoning crisis for all humans, the commission states. Compounding this are existing, and worsening, environmental-degradation problems. For example, 10% of the world's agricultural food production now depends on mined groundwater that is causing a resulting drop in water tables by as much as a metre a year in parts of China, India, Mexico and elsewhere. "Our attitudes on managing water must change," says Ismail Serageldin, the World Bank's vice-president for special programs. — Barbara Sibbald, CMAJ
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