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Water Scarcity Woes A Global Problem That’s Getting Worse by Jeremiah Castelo
By 2025, half of the world’s population will be living in areas of water stress as people will be unable to access the water they need. Climate change, population growth, agricultural demands and mismanagement of water resources all contribute to the growing water crisis. The world’s population will rise to 9.7 billion by 2050, leaving even more people in water-stressed conditions. An estimated 60 percent of all surface water on Earth comes from river basins shared by separate nations and almost 600 aquifers cross national boundaries. In places where water is already scarce, this can lead to geopolitical conflict.
Three in 10 people on Earth currently do not have access to safe and clean water. According to the World Health Organization, 2.1 billion people do not have access to a safely managed water source. An estimated 263 million people must travel over 30 minutes to access water that isn’t clean, and 159 million still drink from untreated surface water sources. One in three people worldwide does not have access to a toilet. Around 2.3 billion people lack access to even basic sanitation services, forcing them to either practice open defecation or use pit latrines and buckets. Fecal contamination in the water supply is a major cause of deadly waterborne diseases such as hepatitis A, norovirus and E. coli. Annually, 1.6 million people die from waterborne diseases. Of the 5 million people that become ill from bad water, most are children. Water privatization causes harm. When corporations site water bottling operations in developing countries like India and Bolivia, they significantly deplete supplies needed by local farmers. In the U.S., when a struggling public water or electricity utility sells their rights to a private corporation, household water and sewer services typically become, respectively, 59 percent and 63 percent more costly. 22
Gulf Coast Alabama/Mississippi Edition
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W
ater scarcity is a legitimate concern. It is true that the hydrologic cycle, the process in which the Earth circulates water throughout its ecosystems, is a closed-loop cycle that neither adds nor takes away water. In theory, the amount of water on Earth will always remain the same. But problems occur when the hydrologic cycle is disrupted, causing some regions to grow arid while others get constant floods. The human activities that disrupt that process include the building of dams, the industrial pollution of waterways, the paving of roads, excessive drilling and bottled water privatization. Here are 10 of the most alarming water scarcity facts that the world is currently facing.
