The Future of Water

The Future of Water



The scarcity of water, severe droughts and floods are major events that have been happening since the beginning of humanity. Water scarcity in the world has become one of the greatest threats to humankind and the cause of many tensions and conflicts. To be essential for the survival and development, sometimes the fresh water reserves have been the source of conflicts and quarrels, but also a matter of cooperation among those sharing water resources. Negotiations on the allocation and management of water resources have become more frequent as demand increases for the precious element.

So even, the water issues have important implications for gender. In developing countries women and children are usually responsible for collecting water and estimated annual women and girls spend 10 million person-years in the transport of water from distant sources. Experts estimate that within 50 years, some 2,500 million people suffer from this shortage, which today are already experiencing in many regions of our planet. Some 1,000 million people lack access to water taps or wells or rivers near their home.

According to a UN study, over 1,400 million people lack clean water and between four and six million, mostly children, die each year from diseases linked to water. Moreover, this study quantifies in about 3,350 million cases of illnesses that lack of access to clean drinking water cause annually and that every eight seconds a child dies from a water-related disease.

The incidence of many of these diseases could be reduced, a large percentage, with an adequate supply of potable water.

The distribution is very uneven, not only as between different countries, but also between regions within a country within Europe, Spain is an example of this inequality, and even the resource-rich countries like Brazil, has regions where the Northeast with a great shortage. In many regions of the world is significantly reducing the water table.

About 71% of our planet is water and about 97.0% of Earth's water is salt water, 3.0% is on the continents as freshwater. The total fresh water on Earth is 39 million km 3, of which 29 million km 3 are in solid form in ice caps and glaciers, 5 million km 3 are ground and the other 5 million are to surface waters.

In the last century the population has quadrupled, while water consumption has multiplied by nine and consumption for industrial use has increased by forty. The decline in water reserves will be aggravated with the increase in world population, estimated at about 40% of the current in the next 25 years (according to the UN, of the 6,000 billion today, it will 8,300 in the year 2025). The problem is even more serious in the pollution of rivers and lakes worldwide, because although the shortage is due to extreme weather cycles, human activity is playing an important role in the increasing scarcity and what has been called the "water stress" or indication that there is insufficient water quality and quantity to meet ...