how to solve water crisis essay

How can we solve the global water crisis?

Human activities are jeopardizing water at its source. Image: Unsplash/mrjn Photography

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Water-related crises around the world show that current systems of water management are unsuited for a world altered by global warming.
Water-use restrictions, power cuts and other stopgap measures are no longer fit for purpose.
The task now is to understand the links between water, climate change and biodiversity loss, and to properly govern water as a global common good.
The world needs to clearly define its plans, as this will help governments steer innovation and knowhow towards meeting critical goals.

The floods, droughts, heatwaves, and fires that are devastating many parts of the world underscore two fundamental facts. First, damage to freshwater supplies is increasingly straining human societies, especially the poor, with far-reaching implications for economic, social, and political stability. Second, the combined impact of today’s extreme conditions are unprecedented in human history, and are overwhelming policymakers’ ability to respond.

In East Africa, a devastating four-year drought has destroyed millions of livelihoods and left more than 20 million people at risk of starvation. In Pakistan, recent flooding has submerged one-third of the country, killing at least 1,500 people so far and wiping out 45% of this year’s crops. In China, an unprecedented heatwave has caused acute water shortages in regions that account for one-third of the country’s rice production .

Moreover, droughts and fires in the United States and Europe, and severe floods and droughts across India, have reduced global grain yields and food exports, highlighting the extent to which our food production depends on large, stable volumes of water. Add to this the impact of the war in Ukraine on grain and fertilizer supplies, and there is a substantial risk that today’s global food crisis will persist.

For the first time in our history, human activities are jeopardizing water at its very source. Climate change and deforestation are reshaping the monsoon season, causing ice on the Tibetan plateau to melt , and affecting freshwater supplies to more than one billion people. Rising global temperatures are changing evaporation patterns and reducing moisture feedback from forests, disrupting downwind rainfall. And a destabilized global water cycle is itself aggravating climate change. For example, the depletion of water in the soil and forests is reducing their ability to sequester carbon .

Water-use restrictions, power cuts, and other stopgap measures can no longer paper over the fact that our water governance and management systems are not suited for a world of radical environmental change. All our current arrangements rest on the assumption, now invalidated, that the water supply is relatively stable (within the bounds of natural variability), predictable, and manageable in localized ways. But the water crisis is global, and it can be solved only with transformational thinking and new governance.

We must recognize that all our key environmental challenges are connected to water – whether there is too much or too little, or whether it is too polluted for human use. The task now is to understand the links between water, climate change, and biodiversity loss, and to properly define, value, and govern water as a global common good. Thinking about water in this way will allow us to mobilize collective action and design new rules that put equity and justice at the center of our response.

For too long, most governments have either ignored market failures or responded to them with quick fixes, rather than mobilizing the public and private sectors around common ambitions. The public sector must see itself as a market shaper that works with all stakeholders in the water economy to create pathways for innovation and investment, ensure universal access to clean water and sanitation, and provide enough water for food, energy, and natural systems.

A key lesson from past challenges that demanded systemic innovation is that a clearly defined mission is needed to organize our efforts. Mission-oriented policies allow governments to steer innovation and knowhow directly toward meeting critical goals. When guided by an inclusive “common-good” approach, they are uniquely capable of delivering solutions to challenges that require tremendous levels of coordination and financing across many years. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and water crises are precisely such challenges.

Mission-based strategies can help governments innovate with purpose, direction, and urgency. But to be effective, policymakers must heed the experience and wisdom of the ordinary citizens, communities, and innovators who know how to prosper in a world of water scarcity, higher temperatures, and altered coastline and river systems.

We must now recognize threats to the global freshwater system and translate our awareness into collective action. Because water scarcity will jeopardize all the other Sustainable Development Goals, it should solidify our collective determination to limit temperature increases to 1.5° Celsius above pre-industrial levels (as specified in the Paris climate agreement), and to preserve the natural systems that ensure stable rainfall and runoff patterns.

Water security – both sustainable supply and clean quality – is a critical aspect in ensuring healthy communities. Yet, our world’s water resources are being compromised.

Today, 80% of our wastewater flows untreated back into the environment, while 780 million people still do not have access to an improved water source. By 2030, we may face a 40% global gap between water supply and demand.

The World Economic Forum’s Water Possible Platform is supporting innovative ideas to address the global water challenge.

The Forum supports innovative multi-stakeholder partnerships including the 2030 Water Resources Group , which helps close the gap between global water demand and supply by 2030 and has since helped facilitate $1Billion of investments into water.

Other emerging partnerships include the 50L Home Coalition , which aims to solve the urban water crisis , tackling both water security and climate change; and the Mobilizing Hand Hygiene for All Initiative , formed in response to close the 40% gap of the global population not having access to handwashing services during COVID-19.

Want to join our mission to address the global water challenge? Read more in our impact story .

In tackling these global challenges, we must hardwire the principles of equity and justice into whatever new arrangements we devise. No community can thrive without a reliable supply of clean water. But safeguarding this global common good requires new policies and systems.

Law and economics must both be reoriented to ensure universal access to clean drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene, and to build more resilient and sustainable food systems. Incentives must change so that the private sector can do its part to provide access to technology and innovation to poor and rich countries alike. This will require long-term finance and novel mechanisms to regulate how the public and private sectors work together.

Have you read?

Ensuring sustainable water management for all by 2030, we need to rethink how we manage our water systems — before it’s too late, low-income communities lack access to clean water. it’s time for change.

The UN 2023 Water Conference – the first in almost 50 years – will be a pivotal moment for the international community to start mapping out a future that works for everyone. In preparing for it, we can take inspiration from Nicholas Stern , who rewrote the economics of climate change , and Partha Dasgupta , who rewrote the economics of biodiversity . As the four co-chairs of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water , our goal is to transform the world’s understanding of the economics and governance of water, placing a much stronger emphasis on equity, justice, effectiveness, and democracy.

We can still redefine our relationship with water and redesign our economies to value water as a global common good. But the window of opportunity is closing. To have a chance of avoiding climate catastrophe and adapting to unavoidable change, we must ensure a resilient water future for poor and rich societies alike.

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The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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01 August 2023

Water crisis: how local technologies can help solve a global problem

You have full access to this article via your institution.

A man works during the installation of 'fog catchers' that collect between 200 and 400 liters per day, Lima.

Fog-catching nets (seen here in Lima) can collect enough water for daily use. This technology has the potential to be used on larger scales. Credit: Klebher Vasquez/Anadolu Agency/Getty

This year’s United Nations water conference — the first in nearly 50 years — did not lead to a binding agreement . But the event, held in March in New York City, provided a wake-up call: water crises are worsening and need our urgent attention.

As of last year, some 2.2 billion people still lacked access to safe drinking water, according to a July report from the World Health Organization and the UN children’s agency UNICEF (see go.nature.com/3djb6tb ). And some 653 million people did not have hand-washing facilities at home.

Fixing these problems is among the targets of the sixth of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” by 2030. This editorial is part of Nature ’s series looking at each of the SDGs , set in 2015, at their halfway stage. We are focusing on questions and gaps that researchers can help to address.

Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals

When the SDGs launched, there was optimism that the water goal could be reached, and progress has been made on some of its targets. Since 2000, an extra 2 billion people have gained access to safe drinking water, and by 2020, some 56% of all households had their waste water treated.

But overall progress has not been fast enough, and, as early as 2018, UN-Water, which coordinates the UN’s work on water and sanitation, warned that the world was not on track. Countries are not prioritizing this goal, either at the national or the global level. By the UN’s own estimates, to achieve SDG 6, the world will need to spend US$260 billion per year by 2030 — mostly in Asia and Africa, where the numbers of people without safe drinking water are highest. International development assistance for water-related projects is currently around $9 billion annually, and has been falling since 2017. When there’s no policy strategy, it becomes hard to demonstrate research or pilot projects on large scales. Yet that is what needs to happen if clean water and sanitation are to become universal.

Generations of water-stressed communities have applied the results of knowledge and innovation to get water. But there has been, at best, partial success for attempts to systematically share techniques that are known to work on local scales , such as condensing water from clouds with giant nets, used in Chile and Peru, or storing snow for use in dry periods, as practised in parts of China.

It’s the same for newer technologies. For example, membrane distillation is a low-temperature method of desalinating water. It’s greener than existing methods because it uses less electricity, as chemical engineer Mohammed Rasool Qtaishat at the University of Jordan and his colleagues reported last year 1 . However, it is struggling to break out of the research and pilot phases and be deployed at larger scales. In a study 2 published in March, Patricia Gorgojo, a chemical engineer at the University of Zaragoza, Spain, and her colleagues recommend improving communication between those who undertake small-scale studies and those who implement larger-scale demonstration projects, because the two often have different needs.

Global action on water: less rhetoric and more science

When it comes to research in its broader sense, results can be scaled up, as medical anthropologist Sera Young and her team at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, show 3 , 4 . They have developed inclusive measures of the experience of being water-stressed, called water insecurity experiences (WISE) scales.

SDG 6’s sanitation target calls for “special attention to the needs of women and girls”. But the UN’s annual progress reports do not include data on this topic. The principal reason seems to be that surveys are typically conducted at the household level — rather than at the individual level — and therefore cannot be disaggregated by sex or gender. This is where the WISE scales are effective: they can collect data at the household or individual level. They examine how water insecurity affects daily activities, health and well-being, from cooking, hand washing and laundry to personal hygiene and feelings of anger and anxiety. Respondents are identified according to age, gender and income, among other characteristics.

The WISE scales are being used by some 100 national, intergovernmental, research and civil-society organizations around the world. Their use as a policy tool was demonstrated last year in Australia, which officially, has relatively low levels of water insecurity, with just 1% of the population affected. But some communities don’t recognize this picture. In 2022, Yuwaya Ngarra-li, a partnership between the Dharriwaa Elders Group — an Aboriginal cultural organization in the rural town of Walgett — and the University of New South Wales in Sydney applied the WISE methodology to a survey of 251 people and found that around 44% of respondents reported water insecurity and 46% food insecurity (see go.nature.com/3dciovf ). The communities and Walgett Shire Council are exploring how to bring about improvements.

As the world gets closer to the 2030 SDG deadline, more ideas will undoubtedly emerge, with promising potential. But SDG 6 will not be achieved without attention to scale. This is a large missing piece of the water and sanitation jigsaw. Ultimately, implementation is what matters.

Nature 620 , 7 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02442-7

Qtaishat, M. R. et al. Sci. Rep. 12 , 13564 (2022).

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López-Porfiri, P. et al. npj Clean Water 6 , 18 (2023).

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Young, S. L. et al. BMJ Glob. Health 4 , e001750 (2019).

Young, S. L., Bethancourt, H. J., Ritter, Z. R. & Frongillo, E. A. BMJ Glob. Health 6 , e006460 (2021).

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Accelerating Change To Solve The Water Crisis

There is an urgent need to accelerate change to address the global water crisis. Explore stories from Yemen, India, and Tanzania to see how the WorldBank works with partners to provide affordable, accessible & safe water for all.

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Residents queue to fill water bottles at a natural water spring in Cape Town, South Africa, a city that may soon have to shut off its taps due to a severe water shortage.

From Not Enough to Too Much, the World’s Water Crisis Explained

Many more cities than Cape Town face an uncertain future over water. But there are emerging solutions.

“Day Zero,” when at least a million homes in the city of Cape Town, South Africa, will no longer have any running water , was originally scheduled for April. It was recently moved to July . The three-year long drought hasn’t ended, but severe water rationing—limiting people to a mere 13 gallons (50 litres) per person per day—has made a difference. (To put this into perspective, an average U.S. citizen uses 100 gallons (375 liters) per day .)

“No person in Cape Town should be flushing potable water down a toilet any more.… No one should be showering more than twice a week now,” said Helen Zille , the premier of the Western Cape province, where Cape Town is located.

Like many places in the world, Cape Town and the surrounding region has likely reached “peak water,” or the limit of how much water can be reasonably taken from the area, says water scientist Peter Gleick , president-emeritus of the Pacific Institute. Gleick, who has spent substantial time in South Africa, says the country generally has good water managers.

“Two years ago, I would not have predicted Cape Town would face day Zero,” he said in an interview. However, climate change has disrupted the Earth’s hydrological cycle (water cycle), changing when, where, and how much precipitation falls. That has made water management planning far more challenging, he said. Yet our water systems were largely built based on the more stable climate of the past.

“What’s happening in Cape Town could happen anywhere,” says Gleick.

Global Risk

Brazil’s São Paulo, a megacity of 20 million, faced its own Day Zero in 2015. The city turned off its water supply for 12 hours a day, forcing many businesses and industries to shut down . In 2008, Barcelona, Spain, had to import tankers full of freshwater from France. Droughts have also become more frequent, more severe, and affecting more people around the world.

For Hungry Minds

Fourteen of the world’s 20 megacities are now experiencing water scarcity or drought conditions. As many as four billion people already live in regions that experience severe water stress for at least one month of the year, according to a 2016 study in the journal Science Advances . Nearly half of those people live in India and China. With populations rising, these stresses will only mount.

Disaster data compiled by the U.N . clearly shows floods are also getting worse. They are happening more frequently, especially in coastal regions and river valleys, and affecting more people. Of all major disasters in the world between 1995 and 2015, 90 percent were weather-related events, such as floods, storms, heatwaves, and droughts. Flooding accounted for more than half of all weather-related disasters, affecting 2.3 billion people and killing 157,000 in that 20-year period. Last year, the costs of extreme weather—floods, droughts, wildfires, storms—in the U.S. reached a record-topping $300 billion . These events displaced more than one million Americans from their homes.

Humanity is facing a growing challenge of too much water in some places and not enough water in others. This is being driven not just by climate change, but by population and economic growth and poor water management, experts warn.

“Water scarcity and flood problems are primarily due to quick growth, increasing vulnerability, and insufficient preparation,” says Arjen Hoekstra , a professor of water management at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. “Climate change, however, is and will worsen the situation in most cases.”

The Roll of “Embedded Water”

Cape Town, where nearly four million people live, has a dry climate much like southern California. It is facing it’s Day Zero due to increased water demands from population and economic growth in combination with a three-year drought that’s severely limited the water supply. Yet what many people don’t realize is that typical home use of water—for washing, flushing, and cooking—represents only about three percent of humanity’s total water consumption, says Hoekstra. Agriculture uses the lion’s share, 80 to 90 percent, followed by energy production and industry.

Rivers Run Dry

The Cape Town region is the heart of South Africa’s wine country, which exported 113 million gallons (428.5 million litres) of wine in 2016 to Europe and the U.S. Yet this export represents a much bigger amount of water that was used to grow and process the grapes. Most of that water is no longer available for human consumption, according to Hoekstra, who is the creator of the water footprint concept. He and colleagues at the Water Footprint Network have worked out that it takes between 26 to 53 gallons (100 to 200 liters) of water to grow the grapes and process them into one five-ounce (125 ml) glass of wine.

In other words, the net amount of water used to grow or make something, be it a lemon, cellphone, or glass of wine, is the product’s water footprint. Most of the water used to make a typical glass of wine is lost to evaporation, with a small amount stored in the grapes, and the rest unsuitable for reuse. While the evaporated water will eventually become rain, it is unlikely to fall over the same vineyards, or even in the Western Cape province, meaning it is effectively “lost” to the region.

So that means a typical 25-ounce (750 ml) bottle of wine has a water footprint of nearly 200 gallons (750 liters). That means the region’s 2016 wine exports involved the net consumption of 113.2 billion gallons (428.5 billion liters) of water. This is water that is lost to the region.

South Africa already has 7 million people without access to water . Meeting their needs would require 33.3 billion gallons (126 billion liters) per year, one third of the amount the wine industry consumes. On top of that, the Western Cape exported an estimated 231,000 tonnes of citrus fruits , mostly oranges, in 2017. The water footprint of one orange—the net amount of water used to grow it—averages 21 gallons (80 liters). Using that basis, those citrus exports used up 30 billion gallons (115 billion liters) of the province’s water.

Not only does it take water to grow anything, it also takes water to make most things: cars, furniture, books, electronics, buildings, jewelry, toys, and even electricity. This water, which often goes largely unseen, is often called “virtual water.” What gets forgotten is that virtual water is as real as the water you drink.

South Africa, a water-stressed country, also exports oil products, minerals, and metals, all of which require enormous amounts of water. For example, it exported 211 tonnes of platinum in 2012. That’s like an export of 45 billion gallons (170 billion liters) of water—the estimated amount of water needed to mine and process the metal .

Other large countries with growing populations, such as China and India, also export staggering volumes of virtual water, often while facing considerable water scarcity problems at home. “This simply can’t continue,” says Hoekstra.

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Seeking solutions.

All of those exports could be produced using far less water, Hoekstra says. It starts with what he calls the most important water management strategy: grow and produce things in the right place. In other words, water-intensive crops like rice and cotton should be grown in water-rich regions.

In a global economy, drought can be a big issue even in water-rich countries, because of a growing dependence on imports. Around 38 percent of the European Union’s water consumption is reliant on water availability in other countries, to grow soybeans, rice, cotton, and other products that it imports. “That makes Europe vulnerable to increasing water scarcity and drought,” says Christopher Briggs , executive director of Water Footprint Network.

A coastal city, Cape Town hopes to solve its problem by getting a new water source: the ocean. It is building its first desalination plants . However, these are expensive and energy intensive. Gleick says it would be more cost effective for the region to shift to less-water intensive crops and to reuse treated wastewater. Currently, Cape Town reuses just five percent of its treated wastewater, compared to Israel’s 85 percent. Israel has also eliminated water-thirsty crops like cotton and made major improvements in water efficiency to free up more water for population growth.

California, which recently suffered through four years of drought and water restrictions , also needs to shift its agricultural production to less water-using crops, says Gleick, who is based there. And the state could increase its wastewater reuse from the current 15 percent, using the surplus to recharge depleted aquifers and use on crops.

A reservoir can be seen at a low level in Cape Town in February. Many other cities could suffer similar fates in the near future, experts warn.

When There’s Too Much Water

Perhaps ironically, too much water too fast was California’s most recent water problem. Following its worst wildfire season in history, heavy rainfall this winter produced mud slides that killed more than 20 people and destroyed or damaged hundreds of homes. Hurricane Harvey , which hit Texas and Louisiana last August, causing $125 billion in damage, dumped more water out of the sky than any storm in U.S. history. Some 890,000 families sought federal disaster aid, most often from flooding in the Houston area—in large part because many homes were built on flood plains . At the start of March, five states were under a state of emergency (Louisiana, Kentucky, Indiana, Missouri, and Michigan) due to heavy rainfalls and flooding.

Rapid population growth, building on floodplains or low-lying coastal regions, and climate change are the biggest reasons why flooding is affecting more people and causing ever greater damage, warns Gleick.

Climate change is the result of burning fossil fuels and has added 46 percent more heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. But even if fossil-fuel used ended today, that additional heat in the atmosphere will put 10 times more Americans at risk of being flooded out by rivers over the next 20 years, a new study reveals .

“More than half of the United States must at least double their protection level within the next two decades if they want to avoid a dramatic increase in river flood risks,” says lead-author Sven Willner from Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

Rainfall changes caused by global warming will increase river flood risks across the globe, the study found. In South America, the number of people affected by river flooding will likely increase from 6 to 12 million. In Africa, the number will rise from 25 to 34 million, and in Asia from 70 to 156 million.

It bears repeating that these findings are based on the current level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In reality, humanity added 45 billion tons in 2017, and will likely add that much or more in 2018. Without limiting human-caused warming to well below 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees Celsius), the river flood risk in many regions will be beyond what we can adapt to, Willner and team’s study concludes.

Climate change is also causing sea levels to rise, resulting in substantial coastal flooding during high tides and storms. More than 13 million Americans living on the coasts will be forced to move by 2100 because of rising ocean levels, according to a 2017 study by Mathew Hauer, a demographer at the University of Georgia. About 2.5 million will flee the region that includes Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach. Greater New Orleans loses up to 500,000 people; the New York City area loses 50,000, the study estimated. These coastal migrants will likely go to cities on high ground with mild climates, such as Atlanta, Austin, Madison, and Memphis. ( See what would happen if all the ice melted .)

“If people are forced to move because their houses become inundated, the migration could affect many landlocked communities as well,” said Hauer in a statement.

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Home — Essay Samples — Environment — Water Scarcity — Water Shortage: A Global Crisis

Water Shortage: a Global Crisis

Categories: Water Water Scarcity

About this sample

Words: 503 |

Published: Sep 12, 2023

Words: 503 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

The causes of water shortage, the consequences of water scarcity, potential solutions and mitigation strategies, conclusion: preserving the blue gold.

Water Conservation: Promoting water-saving practices in agriculture, industry, and households can significantly reduce demand. This includes adopting efficient irrigation methods, fixing leaks, and implementing water recycling systems.
Improved Infrastructure: Developing better water infrastructure, including dams, reservoirs, and distribution networks, can help manage and distribute water more effectively.
Desalination: Investing in desalination technology can provide a source of freshwater in coastal regions where seawater can be converted into potable water.
Rainwater Harvesting: Encouraging rainwater harvesting at the household and community levels can provide an additional source of freshwater, particularly in areas with irregular rainfall patterns.
Policy and Governance: Implementing effective water management policies, regulating water use, and promoting international cooperation in water management are essential steps toward sustainability.

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Farmer Raman Parmar on his farm with the IWMIs solar pump pilot in Thamna village near Anand.

Could these five innovations help solve the global water crisis?

A number of creative technologies aim to increase access to clean water in developing countries. We asked two experts to assess some of them

The global water crisis has many causes, requiring many different solutions. As 1.2 billion people live in areas of water scarcity , these solutions must span policy, technology, and behaviour change to make a real difference.

A number of technological innovations address the crisis in novel ways. We asked two water experts – Vincent Casey, senior water and sanitation adviser at WaterAid , and Hannah Safford, an energy and environmental policy analyst – to assess some of the most creative approaches.

Drinkable Book

In partnership with non-profit Water is Life , researchers at Carnegie Mellon University developed this education and filtration tool. Each page of the book provides basic water and sanitation advice, such as the importance of keeping contaminants like rubbish and faeces away from water, often unknown in developing countries. Perhaps more novel is that the advice is printed on “scientific coffee filter” paper that can be used to purify drinking water and reduce 99.9% of bacteria. Each book has enough filtration sheets to provide its reader with clean water for four years. It’s being distributed in Ghana, Kenya, Haiti, Ethiopia, India and Tanzania, and a Farsi version of the book is in development.

Casey : Many different filter products will purify water and remove pathogens, but it needs to have a demand from users. It also needs to be affordable [in the local context] or come with some credit mechanism. Filters play a crucial role in making the water safe, but if you’re not blocking other routes of transmission (eg flies on food, handwashing after toilet use) you will still have problems. In other words, any filter has to be part of a combined solution.

It looks like a well, but instead of withdrawing groundwater, the WaterSeer uses the surrounding environment to extract water from the atmosphere. It is planted six feet below the surface, where its lower chamber is surrounded by cool earth. Above ground, wind spins a turbine which spins fan blades inside the device. These blades send the air into an internal condensation chamber where, as the warm air cools, the vapour condenses on the sides of the chamber. Water then flows down to the lower chamber and can be extracted with a simple pump and hose. In ideal conditions, it can collect 37 litres of water a day. Developed by VICI labs in the US, the project is being tested by the National Peace Corps Association and will be piloted later this year.

Casey : If we take sub-Saharan Africa as an example, groundwater tends to be available in most places we work – about 20m below the surface. So it’s a management or infrastructure problem that prevents people accessing water, not a lack of it. It’s not really about fixing the problem with technology; it’s about fixing the system. With this example, I would imagine there could be problem with vandalism, as the device seems quite fragile. However, that’s not to say that technology is not part of the solution – it has a role, but it’s makes up 20% of the whole picture, along with policy and management.

Graphene filters

Desalination, converting saltwater into freshwater, has historically been too expensive and energy-intensive to serve as a widespread solution for improving access. However, Lockheed Martin has developed and patented a Perforene graphene filter which it claims would reduce the energy cost of conventional reverse osmosis desalination by 20%, while withstanding higher pressure and temperatures. The perforated, hyper-permeable filter is one atom thick and is said to improve the flow of water compared to conventional methods by 500%. While the technology would be hugely beneficial to the oil and gas sector, which reportedly produces 18bn gallons of wastewater each year , the company is also researching other applications for the technology, including in food and energy generation.

Safford : Desalination should only be used as a last resort. Emphasis should be placed on smart water management, reducing water losses, and increasing the uptake of water-efficient technologies practices. But in regions where there is truly not enough freshwater to meet demand, a cheaper and less energy-intensive desalination method is certainly a good thing.

Fog catchers

Nets set up by a group of community leaders called ‘Peruvians Without Water’ are used to trap water from the moisture in fog.

Vast mesh nets capture moisture from fog, which drips into collection trays after condensation. The largest of these projects is on the slopes of Mount Boutmezguida , a microclimate in Morocco where 6,300 litres of water can be harvested per day. The water is clean, free and instant, which is perhaps why Dar Si Hmad – the non-profit responsible for the project –was awarded the UN’s 2016 Momentum for Change award. First developed in South America, fog catching systems also exist in Chile, Peru , Ghana, Eritrea, South Africa and California.

Safford : Fog catching could provide a sustainable supply of drinking water for small communities in water-scarce regions, but it is unlikely to generate enough water to significantly increase water supplies. The Mount Boutmezguida project only generates enough water to serve about 160 people per day – a project of a similar size in a developed country would serve a smaller number of people [due to higher consumption habits].

Sukhdev Vishwakarma and his daughter, Meenu, use water pumped from a solar water pump at a farms in Jagadhri.

In hot and dry climates, many farmers pump groundwater to irrigate crops, and there has been a growth in the use of solar-powered pumps. A problem arises when farmers view solar energy as free, as it can cause over-irrigation. A part-technological, part policy and management solution by CGIAR’s research programme on water, land and ecosystems , and in partnership with the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), incentivises farmers using solar pumps to sell excess power back to the grid. The guaranteed buy-back scheme produces a “triple win”; farmers gain income, the state gains electricity reserves, and the water source is conserved by curbing usage – all while reducing carbon emissions. The scheme is being piloted in Gujarat, and IWMI estimates that solarising India’s 20m irrigation wells could reduce carbon emissions by 4-5% per year.

Casey : A good initiative addressing a serious problem through changes to policy and management, not just focusing on a technical solution. In addition, selling electricity back to the grid could generate revenue to conduct maintenance on these pumps – a good sign for the sustainability of the arrangement.

What have we missed? Have you developed technology to tackle water problems? Tell us in the comments below.

Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter, and have your say on issues around water in development using #H2Oideas .

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5 ways to avert a global water crisis

In 2050, Earth could be home to 10 billion people, but we will not have more freshwater than today. To avert a global crisis, we must immediately change how we use and manage water. Here are five ways to get started.

Already today, close to 4 billion people lack sufficient water at least one month per year and the situation is rapidly deteriorating. The combination of climate change, growing demand and a rising global population is putting increasing pressure on the world’s freshwater. Human activities have broken the water cycle – the system that produces and recycles water – and mending it must now be a top priority.

1. Value water

The situation will only improve when we begin to understand the true value of water. All life requires water, it is a finite resource, and it has no substitute. Given these three characteristics it seems absurd that water has often not been attributed any value at all, though this is luckily starting to change.

When societies place a higher value on water, we can expect improved efficiency and reuse instead of waste and pollution. Both the public and the private sector will want to invest in crumbling water infrastructure to limit waste and prepare for future weather extremes. It makes sense to apply more nature-based solutions to clean water and recharge supply. As we start to understand the true cost of pollution, we can expect improved wastewater treatment and more recycling. All sectors of society must learn to manage water in a way that strengthens the water cycle.

2. Share water

Competition over water is likely to increase and good water governance will be critical. Though having access to clean water and safe sanitation is a human right, the fact the remains that one person in four still does not have access to clean water at home. Similarly, around half the global populations lacks safely managed toilets, which is a major driver of disease and deaths, especially among children. At a time of growing climate threats, lack of water and sanitation exacerbates the vulnerability of the world’s poorest.

Sharing water is an efficient way to increase justice and resilience. This is equally true for relationships between countries who share a river, lake, or groundwater aquifer. By managing it together, they are much better prepared for the increasingly erratic rainfall patterns and the growing number of droughts and floods that must be expected as the global temperature rises.

3. Transform agriculture

All over the world, agriculture must undergo massive transformations, for several reasons. First, to avoid mass hunger since climate change and degraded lands are making farming much more difficult in many parts of the world. Second, to make freshwater available for alternative uses – currently food production accounts for 70 per cent of freshwater withdrawals. A third reason is because agriculture is a main driver of water pollution and global warming.

We need more research and innovation to improve the sustainability, climate resilience and water efficiency of agriculture. But many alternative methods already exist that recharge water, restore soil health and improve food security. Often a combination of traditional knowledge and new inventions give the best results. Changing food habits and reducing waste are other key factors in the overhaul of the global food system that has started and now needs to rapidly pick up speed.

4. Restore ecosystems

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) warns of an era of mass extinction of species that could threaten also human existence. We depend on healthy ecosystems for food, water, and livelihoods. But by protecting and restoring ecosystems we can limit climate change, stop the loss of biodiversity, and improve water security.

Since all living organisms depend on water, we must pay more attention to the role of water in ecosystems. And this is starting to happen. A growing number of governments and companies understand their responsibility to protect and restore forests, rivers, wetlands, and oceans. This is in turn should mean that we stop over-abstracting and polluting the world’s groundwater, which poses an enormous risk to global food and water security.

5. Build resilience

More and more signs are indicating that Earth’s life-support systems are seriously weakened – across the world people experience droughts, heat waves, floods, and rainstorms at an unprecedented scale. Such extremes are expected to only become more frequent and more severe, making it necessary for all sectors of society to redesign for resilience.

Luckily there are already many good examples from across the world of how this can be done. Cities are integrating trees, wetlands, and farmland to recharge and clean water, boost carbon storage, and reduce the risk of flooding. Farmers shift to agroforestry and methods that improve soil health. Communities protect their local watersheds and manage forests in a way that improves groundwater recharge.

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Solutions to water scarcity

How to prevent water shortages.

Water stress is a serious issue in many parts of the world. Discover its causes and effects, but most importantly the solutions to the water crisis.

01. Solutions

02. Definition

04. Effects

05. Prevention

Water is one of the most precious resources on the planet. More than 1 billion people do not have access to a source of clean drinking water, and around 3 billion experience water scarcity at least one month per year.

What is the definition of water scarcity? What are its causes and effects? And most importantly, how to overcome the water scarcity problem?

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The Solar Impulse Label is granted to innovative water scarcity solutions that meet high standards of sustainability and profitability.

Each solution goes through a strict assessment process performed by independent experts.

Mixergy PV Embedded Smart Cylinder

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A solar-powered unit generates electricity and desalinates water for underserved communities

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SUEZ Smart Village

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A kitchen water filter to turn taps into sources of clean water, to avoid bottled water consumption.

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Atmospheric Water Generation Technology

Generating clean drinking water from atmospheric moisture

Joulia-Inline

A simple and ecological shower drain with heat recovery

A sensor enabling online measurement of cip station

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A solution combining a super-absorbent fertiliser with an IT solution, to save irrigation water

Artificial intelligence (ai) to reduce water losses in water distribution networks

What is water scarcity?

Water scarcity, both natural and of human origin, is the lack of sufficient available water resources to meet the demands within a region. Water is unequally distributed over time and space. Much of it is wasted, polluted and unsustainably managed. There is no global water scarcity as such, but a number of places and regions are chronically short of water because its use at the global level has increased more than twice as fast as the population over the last century. Pressure on water resources is increasing in several parts of the world, especially in China, India, Pakistan, in the Middle East and many countries and regions of Africa.

Water scarcity Causes

What are the main sources of water scarcity?

The degradation of water quality contributes to the shortage. Water pollution has environmental consequences that make water unfit for consumption or use and reduce the available water resources. Pollution is thus becoming one of the main threats to the availability and reuse of water. Fertilizers and pesticides, soil depletion and poor waste disposal conditions are detrimental to available freshwater sources.

Overuse of water

The misuse of water resources is another big issue leading to water scarcity. Inadequate management of water resources, whether it be for agriculture - using 70% of the world’s accessible freshwater - industrial activities or domestic use, causes a lot of wasted water. Considering that we are wasting more water than ever before, this causes a lot of “stress” on the amount of available water resources.

Climate Change

Glaciers and ice packs are melting in some areas, affecting the freshwater supplies. Moreover, because of global warming , there are more and more droughts, floods and heat waves. Climate change is therefore worsening the water crisis, especially in regions that are already under water stress.

Growing freshwater demand

Over the last 50 years, the world's population has doubled and continues to grow. As a result, the use of water to drink, cook and meet other needs has tripled. As the global population is expected to boom in the coming decades, water resources need to be managed more efficiently.

Water scarcity Effects

Water shortages have a great impact on human health, socio-economic development, and the environment:

1. Hunger, poverty and education

Apart from dehydration due to the obvious lack of drinking water, hunger is one the most serious effect of water scarcity. Why? Water shortages have a direct impact on crops and livestock, which can lead to food shortages and eventually starvation. As well, because of water shortages some people cannot shower, wash their clothes or clean their homes properly. In the poorest countries, some children can’t go to school, because they are either too sick or they have to walk for a long time to reach a water source. Even when they can attend, many children cannot learn because of their fatigue, heavy responsibilities and worries for their families.

2. Sanitation issues and diseases

Water scarcity generates sanitation problems by forcing people to drink unsafe water. In fact, when water is scarce people tend to store it at home, which increases the risk of domestic water contamination and creates breeding grounds for mosquitoes, which transmit dengue and malaria. Lack of water cause other diseases such as trachoma (an eye infection that can cause blindness), plague and typhus.

3. Conflicts

Having access to water has become a powerful global economic issue that could become one of the main causes of international tension. Local conflicts - sometimes resulting in warfare - are triggered over scarce water resources. With the burgeoning global population and growing needs, these tensions could multiply in the future.

4. Biodiversity loss

Water scarcity has different negative impacts on rivers, lakes, and other freshwater resources. It harms the environment in several ways including increased salinity, nutrient pollution, and the loss of floodplains and wetlands. Ecosystems and biodiversity (e.g. freshwater fish) are threatened by the scarcity of water resources.

Water scarcity prevention

There are ways to save water and prevent water scarcity:

1. Sustainable water management

Improving water infrastructure must be a priority, as water conservation and efficiency are key components of sustainable water management. Solar desalination and smart irrigation systems are great examples of clean technology for water efficiency and control. That obviously applies even more to the agriculture and farming sector - the largest consumer of water.

2. Reclaimed water

Rainwater harvesting and recycled wastewater also allow to reduce scarcity and ease pressures on groundwater and other natural water bodies. Groundwater recharge, that allows water moving from surface water to groundwater, is a well-known process to prevent water scarcity.

3. Pollution control & better sewage treatment

Without proper sanitation, the water becomes full of diseases and unsafe to drink. That is why addressing pollution, measuring and monitoring water quality is essential. Besides, improving the sewage systems in specific areas is another way to prevent water scarcity from becoming any worse.

4. Awareness & Education

Education is critical to solve the water crisis. In fact, in order to cope with future water scarcity, it is necessary to radically reform all forms of consumption, from individual use to the supply chains of large companies.

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Water Scarcity Essay

Essay on Water Scarcity

Water is the basic necessity of every human being, but water scarcity is a major issue that is rising very rapidly in India nowadays. The problem has become so severe that in many states the groundwater has almost dried up and people have to depend on water supply from other sources. In addition, water is one of the most misused natural resources that we still waste. It is the central point of our lives but unfortunately, not our priority concern.

Earlier, people understood the value of water and planned their lives around it. Moreover, many civilizations were born and lost around water, but today, in spite of having knowledge, we still fail to understand the value of water in our lives.

Reasons for Water Scarcity

Mismanagement of water and the growing population in our country are the two main reasons for water scarcity. There are also a number of other man made disturbances that continue to rise. Besides this, some of the reasons for water scarcity are:

Wasteful Use of Water for Agriculture

India, an agricultural country, produces a huge quantity of food to feed its population. The surplus that is left, gets exported outside.

It is not unknown that producing this much food requires a lot of water too. The traditional method of irrigation wastes a lot of water due to evaporation, water conveyance, drainage, percolation, and the overuse of groundwater. Besides, most of the areas in India use traditional irrigation techniques that stress the availability of water.

However, the technique of irrigation has changed during modern times and we provide water to plants using a sprinkler or drip irrigation.

Reduction in Water Recharges Systems

Rapid construction that uses concrete and marbles may not let the rainwater get absorbed in the soil, but still, we install some mechanism in our houses so that we can hold the rainwater. Then we can recharge the groundwater.

Lack of Water Management and Distribution

There is a need for an efficient system to manage and distribute the water in urban areas. The Indian government also needs to enhance its technology and investment in water treatment. Besides, we should ensure optimization at the planning level.

Solutions to Overcome this Problem

Close the running tap.

During dishwashing and hand washing people often let the tap run. These running taps waste thousands of liters of water per year. Therefore, closing the tap will reduce this problem.

Replace Dripping Taps

In India, it is commonly seen that most of the houses have taps or faucets that go on dripping water even when they are closed. This running tap wastes up to 30,000 liters of water that nobody bothers to change. So, we should replace these taps immediately.

Brief on Water Scarcity

Water is a basic necessity for every living being. Life without water is impossible, not just for us humans, but for all plants and animals too. Water scarcity is an issue of grave concern these days as water scarcity has become very common. Water is one of the most wasted natural resources and corrective measures should be taken before the water scarcity situation becomes worse. In spite of being aware of the implications, not much is being done today.

In India, and across the world, it has been recorded that about half a billion people face a shortage of water for about six months annually. Many well-known cities around the world are facing acute scarcity of water. Many facts and figures are available to know about the water scarcity problem, but what are the reasons for this scarcity?

With the growing population, the use of water has increased manifold. The lack of more freshwater sources and the increase in population is a major reason for this scarcity. The lack of proper Water management systems and proper drainage systems in India, especially in the urban areas is a major cause too. Kitchen wastewater should be able to be recycled but due to a poor drainage system, this is not possible. An efficient water management system is required in order to distribute water in urban areas.

Another major issue is Deforestation. Areas with more greenery and plants are known to have good rainfall. Industrialisation and urbanization are two major factors here. Due to Deforestation, and cutting down of trees, rainfall has become an issue too.

Rivers are a major source of fresh water in India. Today we see a lot of industries that have come up and all of them are mostly near the rivers and these rivers become highly polluted as a result of all the industrial waste.

Effect of Global Warming and Climate Change

Global Warming and Climate Change are also responsible for the scarcity of water. The melting of icebergs into the sea due to the rise in temperatures is a reason as to how salty water is increasing day by day instead of freshwater. The percentage of rainfall has decreased drastically these days. Climate change along with the decrease in rainfall percentage has greatly affected freshwater bodies.

Water scarcity has become a major problem and an alarming issue these days, and we must consciously strive to work together to find some solution to this issue of water scarcity. The Indian government today has formulated and come up with many plans on how to tackle and solve this problem.

To conclude, water scarcity has become an alarming issue day by day. If we do not take the problem of water scarcity seriously now, our future generations are going to suffer severely and may even have to buy this necessity at a high cost.

FAQs on Water Scarcity Essay

1. What are the reasons for Water Scarcity?

The lack of proper Water Management and proper Drainage system plays a major role. Many other factors and reasons can be held responsible for the scarcity of water. Some of the major reasons are Global Warming and Climate Change; Pollution of the rivers due to industrialization; Deforestation and the cutting down of trees is another reason; Reduced percentage of rainfall due to the climate change pattern; Increase in the population which leads to increase in the use of water. Learn more about water scarcity on Vedantu website helpful for long-term.

2. What is meant by the scarcity of water?

The scarcity of water means a shortage of water and not being able to manage the demand and supply of water. Water scarcity refers to the lack of freshwater bodies to meet the standard quantity and demand of water. Unequal distribution of water due to factors like Climate Change and Global Warming. Water Scarcity is also due to pollution and lack of rainfall. Water scarcity means a scarcity due to some physical scarcity or scarcity due to the lack of regular supply.

3. What are the two types of water scarcity?

Physical water scarcity is the result of regions' demand outpacing the limited water resources found in that location. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, about 1.2 billion people live in areas of physical scarcity and many of these people live in arid or semi-arid regions. People who are affected by this Physical kind of water scarcity are expected to grow as the population increases and as the weather patterns keep changing as a result of climate change.

Economic water scarcity is due to the lack of proper water infrastructure and a proper water management system or also because of poor management of water resources. The FAO estimates that more than 1.6 billion people face economic water shortages today. Economic water scarcity can also take place because of the unregulated use of water for agriculture and industry.

4. How can we solve the problem?

Conscious awareness is required to deal with and understand the problem of water scarcity. We can start off by consciously saving water in our homes and surroundings. Small easy steps like taking care when washing hands, or when working in the kitchen, have to be taken. The running water taps are a major reason for losing hundreds of liters of water on a daily basis. And we should be careful not to waste this water. Conscious decision to save and the need to understand the problem of water scarcity is of utmost importance.

5. How do we waste water?

Water is wasted in ways we do not even realize, in our homes and in our workplaces. When we brush our teeth, when we shave or when we wash the dishes, one of the most common things we do is to keep the water running, especially when running water is available. As soon as we begin cleaning or washing, we do not think of the water that is being wasted. While washing hands, we leave the water tap on, which results in wasting water too. Small things like these should be kept in mind and this could be our small step towards preserving water.

India’s Water Crisis – How to Solve it?

From Current Affairs Notes for UPSC » Editorials & In-depths » This topic

Water is the most valuable natural resource as it is essential for human survival and life on earth. However, the availability of freshwater for human consumption is highly under stress because of a variety of factors. This crisis of water scarcity is most visible in India as well as in other developing countries.

Disclaimer: IAS EXPRESS owns the copyright to this content.

This topic of “India’s Water Crisis – How to Solve it?” is important from the perspective of the UPSC IAS Examination , which falls under General Studies Portion.

What is water scarcity?

Water scarcity is the lack of freshwater resources to satisfy water demand.
It is manifested by partial or no satisfaction of expressed demand, economic competition for water quantity or quality, disputes between users, irreversible groundwater depletion, and negative effects on the environment.
It affects every continent and was categorised in 2019 by the World Economic Forum as one of the largest global risks with respect to its potential impact over the next decade.
One-third of the global population (2 billion people) live under situations of severe water scarcity at least one month of the year.
Half a billion people in the world affected by severe water scarcity all year round.
Half of the world’s largest cities have been facing water scarcity.

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How is the water scarcity measured?

The absolute minimum water requirement for domestic usage is 50 litres per person per day, though 100-200 litres is often recommended.
Considering the needs of agriculture, industry and energy sectors, the recommended minimum annual per capita requirement is about 1700 cubic meters .
If a country like India has only about 1700 cu. meters water per person per year, it will experience only occasional or local water distress .
If the availability falls below this threshold level, the country will start to experience periodic or regular water stress .
If the water availability declines below 1000 cu. meters, the country will suffer from chronic water scarcity . Lack of water will then start to severely affect human health and well-being as well as economic development.
If the annual per capita supply declines below 500 cu. meters, the country will reach the stage of absolute scarcity .

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What is the status of water availability in India?

India receives 4000 bcm (billion cubic metres) rainfall each year. Out of this, 1869 bcm remains after evaporation = The actual availability is only 1137 bcm.
Even in that 1137 bcm of water, there is a lot of temporal as well as regional variations in the availability.
For instance, on the one side, there are water surplus states such as Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and on the other side, there are water scarce states such as Maharashtra (Vidarbha, Beed), Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and parts of Gujarat.
Moreover, some states that are known to be water abundant such as Punjab, Haryana have their own issues.

What is the magnitude of the water crisis in India?

Currently, the annual availability of water is 1123 bcm in India and the demand is around 750 bcm. However, by 2050 the annual demand for water will be 1180 bcm which will exceed the water availability = wide ramifications for the country.
70% of India’s water is contaminated.
75% of households do not have drinking water on its premises.
84% of rural households do not have access to piped water.
54% of the country’s groundwater is declining rapidly than it is being replenished.
India’s water table is declining in most regions. Also, there is a presence of toxic elements like fluoride, arsenic, mercury, even uranium in our groundwater.
Water levels in India’s major reservoirs have fallen to 21% of the average of the last decade.
Hundreds of small and seasonal rivers are perishing permanently.
Almost all the major perennial rivers remain stagnant.
Cauvery and its tributaries haven’t met the ocean for decades; the upstream dams choke its flows downstream, affecting people in Tamil Nadu.
Krishna river runs dry in her delta region for most of the year.
According to NITI Aayog’s water quality index, India ranks 120 th among 122 countries.

What is the recent water crisis in India?

Maharashtra is facing a water crisis of unprecedented proportions. After years of drought, the river currents have ebbed, water in dams and reservoirs have depleted and over-exploitation of groundwater has raised concerns regarding the long-term availability of water.
Meanwhile, media reports claim IT firms in Chennai are asking employees to work from home. The reason is that they don’t have enough water to sustain their operations. It hasn’t rained for almost 200 days in the city and it may not get adequate rain to get over the water crisis for the next 3 months.
In North India, the people of arid Thar Desert of Rajasthan are spending Rs. 2500 for getting 2500 litres of water which they share with their cattle.
With Punjab facing the threat of desertification and the state struggling to break away from the wheat-paddy cycle, farmers in the state have been adopting a decade-old scheme to utilise underground pipeline system for irrigation.
In light of this crisis, Central government on its part has created a Jal Shakti Ministry under a full-fledged cabinet minister to resolve the water crisis but a lot more needs to be done.

What are the reasons for this crisis?

Monsoon dependence:.

There is a huge dependence on monsoon rains to replenish most of India’s important water sources such as underground aquifers, lakes, rivers, and reservoirs . But monsoon is vulnerable to factors such as climate change, El-Nino , etc.

Uneven distribution of water and Rainfall pattern :

Certain regions have surplus amounts of water for their need while others face perennial droughts for most of the year. For instance, Drought is a recurrent phenomenon in Andhra Pradesh where no district is entirely free of droughts. Rajasthan is one of the most drought-prone areas of India.

Increasing demand :

Population growth, industrialization, rapid urbanisation, rising needs of irrigation and increase in domestic water usage have accelerated the demand for water. Since urbanization increases in India at a rapid pace = water demand will increase rapidly as city dwellers consume more water than rural people.

Urbanisation & Water scarcity:

Currently, about 285 million or 33% of India’s total population resides in urban areas. By 2050 this figure will reach 50%.
Rapid urbanisation is adding to the water scarcity issue in the country.
Presence of buildings, tar, and cement roads = even if a city like Mumbai gets good rains, the rainwater is not retained in the area as the water is not allowed to percolate underground.
Therefore, water required for cities is largely drawn from neighbouring villages and far-off rivers and lakes = threatening the availability in those areas.
Large cities also generate large quantities of urban sewage which pollutes the freshwater sources and ocean waters. However, only about 20% of urban wastewater is currently treated globally. In India, the figure is even lower.

Overexploitation :

In developing countries like India, groundwater fulfills nearly 80% of irrigation requirement = resulted in a fast depletion of groundwater sources.
Free power and inefficient utilisation of water by farmers has added to the issue of groundwater depletion.
The groundwater and sand extraction from most river beds and basins has turned unsustainable.
Tanks and ponds are encroached upon.
Dug-wells and borewells are carelessly built to slide deeper and deeper to suck water from greater depths.

Shift to cash-crops:

Water is being diverted from food crops to cash crops that consume an enormous quantity of water.

Inefficient cultivation practices:

In India, around 70% of the population is still dependent on agriculture for its livelihood.
Since the adoption of Green Revolution in the 1960s, nearly 50% of the food production comes from irrigated land.
But inefficient cultivation practices have led to the flooding of fertile land which in turn has caused salinization, siltation of reservoirs, etc = causing groundwater reserves of major agricultural states to be depleted at an alarming rate.

Water Pollution :

Release of industrial and domestic waste, including urban sewage, into rivers, lakes, and estuaries has polluted freshwater sources at an alarming rate in India = those fresh water sources are not fit for drinking or other activities.
Eutrophication of surface water and coastal zones is expected to increase almost everywhere leads to nitrogen pollution .

What are the impacts of the water crisis?

Economic growth: A Niti Aayog report predicted that water demand will be twice the present supply by 2030 and India could lose up to 6% of its GDP during that time.

Power supply: Water shortages are hurting India’s capacity to generate electricity because 40% of thermal power plants are located in areas where water scarcity is high.

Agricultural crisis: Indian agriculture is heavily dependent on monsoon (not dependable) + Ineffective agricultural practices in irrigated areas = Water stress in agriculture = Poor Cultivation = Farmer suicides .

Drinking water scarcity: Not only farmers are affected by the water crisis, urban dwellers in cities and towns across India are also facing a never seen before drinking water scarcity.

Conflicts over water : In India, there are conflicts between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over sharing of Cauvery waters, between Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh over sharing of Narmada waters, between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana over sharing of Krishna waters, etc.

What are the measures taken by the government?

Across the country, states are taking the lead:.

In Rajasthan, there is a scheme named ‘Mukhya Mantri Jal Swavlamban Abhiyan’. One of its objectives is to facilitate effective implementation of water conservation and water harvesting related activities in rural areas.
Maharashtra has launched a project called ‘Jalyukt-Shivar’, which seeks to make 5000 villages free of water scarcity every year.
accelerating the development of minor irrigation infrastructure,
strengthening community-based irrigation management and
adopting a comprehensive programme for restoration of tanks.

Jal Shakti Abhiyan:

It is a collaborative initiative of various Union Ministries and State Governments, being coordinated by the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation (DDWS).
Focus Area: is water-stressed districts (256) and blocks (1592).
Team: Central government officers, headed by joint secretaries and additional secretaries, are assigned to these 256 districts and district administration will also select 2 members to join the team. This team of officers from the central government and district administration will visit and work on water-stressed districts and blocks to ensure water conservation initiatives.
The campaign is centered on 5 aspects
Water conservation and rainwater harvesting
Renovation of traditional and other water bodies/tanks
Reuse of water and recharging of structures like bore well
Watershed development
Intensive afforestation
Significance: With this initiative, the government seeks to provide drinking water to all households on a priority and in a sustainable way. It is also expected to bring a positive mindset in people for water conservation. The campaign will assist people to work for rainwater harvesting, maintenance, and upkeep of ponds and village tanks and conservation of water.

Jal Shakti Mantralaya

The government has created a new Ministry named ‘Jal Shakti’after merging Ministry of Water Resources, River Development & Ganga Rejuvenation with the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation.
Providing clean drinking water,
International and inter-states water disputes,
Namami Gange project aimed at cleaning Ganga and its tributaries, and sub-tributaries.
The ministry will launch the government’s ambitious plan (‘Nal se Jal’ scheme under jal jivan plan) to provide piped drinking water supply to every household in India by 2024.
This Move seeks to consolidate the administration and bringing water-related issues such as conservation, development, management, and abatement of pollution under a single ministry.
National River Conservation Directorate (NRCD) is responsible for implementing the centrally sponsored national river conservation plan for all rivers across the country except river Ganga and its tributaries (as issues regarding Ganga and its tributaries are taken up by National Mission for Clean Ganga).

Jal Jeevan Mission *

Atal Bhujal Yojana *

It is a world bank funded central scheme that aims to improve groundwater management at the national level… Read More .

Can a new water ministry tackle the worst water crisis in Indian history?

Experts are of the opinion that an exclusive ministry can only bring about a cosmetic but not a real change.
Water is a state subject = Unless states make specific requests the centre cannot intervene.

What are the solutions to the water crisis in India?

Good water management practices :

India receives adequate annual rainfall through the south-west monsoon. However, most regions of the country are still water deficient mainly because of inefficient water management practices.
Rainwater harvesting should be encouraged on a large scale, especially, in cities where the surface runoff of rainwater is very high.
Roof-top rainwater harvesting can also be utilised to recharge groundwater by digging percolation pits around the house and filling it with gravel.
Indian cities need to learn from Cape Town of South Africa which when faced with the water crisis in 2018 had announced “ Day Zero “. During that day, water-taps in the city turned off = people had to use communal water-taps to conserve water. Restrictions on water use per person were also fixed.
Since water is a state subject in India state governments should take active measures and create awareness for the minimal use of water.

Interlinking of rivers :

Interlinking of rivers is a topic that has been discussed and debated for several years as a possible permanent solution to the water crisis in the country.
The 3 primary advantages mentioned in favour of the scheme are (1) droughts will never occur (2) there will be no more floods in the major rivers and (3) an additional 30,000 MW of hydropower will be generated.

Coordination in aquifer usage: There is an urgent need for coordination among users for aquifers. There should be laws and contracts for sharing of aquifers. Groundwater aquifer mapping has started only recently in India which is a welcome step.

River basin authority: There should be a River Basin Authority for sharing information among states since most of the rivers in India pass through different states.

Coordinated efforts among states for management of groundwater at a localized level.

Community-level management: At the village level, there can be decentralized management of water at the community level.

Charging money for efficient use of water (like electricity). For example- Water ATMs at Marathwada provide water @25 paisa per litre a day.

Good Cultivation practices:

Changing the cropping pattern, crop diversification and encouraging water use efficiency in agriculture by moving towards food crops from cash crops.
Innovative farming practices like precision farming , zero budget natural farming , etc. could be employed for efficient water utilisation.

Incentive-based water conservation in rural parts of the water-stressed regions is another solution.

For example, if a particular level of groundwater level is maintained, higher MSP can be provided to the farmers of that region.
MSP can also be provided based on crop’s water usage = Crops that consume a high amount of water will get less MSP.

Way forward

India is not a water deficit country, but due to severe neglect and lack of monitoring of water resource development projects, many regions in the country face water stress from time to time. Therefore balancing water demand with available supply is the need of the hour for future economic growth and development as well as for the sustenance of human life.

New National Water Policy (NWP)

In November 2019, the Ministry of Jal Shakti had set up a committee to draft the new National Water Policy (NWP). This was the first time that the government asked a committee of independent experts to draft the policy.

Highlights of NWP

1) demand-side: diversification of public procurement operations.

Irrigation utilizes 80-90% of India’s water , most of which is used by rice, wheat, and sugarcane.
Therefore, crop diversification is the single most crucial step in addressing India’s water crisis.
The policy recommends diversifying public procurement operations to include Nutri-cereals, pulses, and oilseeds.
This would incentivize farmers to diversify their cropping patterns, resulting in huge savings of water.

2) Reduce-Recycle-Reuse

Reduce-Recycle-Reuse has been suggested as the basic mantra of integrated urban water supply and wastewater management, with the treatment of sewage and eco-restoration of urban river stretches, as far as possible via decentralised wastewater management.
All non-potable use like flushing, fire protection, vehicle washing should mandatorily shift to treated wastewater.

3) Supply-side measure: Using technology to use stored water in dams

Within supply-side options, the NWP points to trillions of litres stored in big dams, that are still not reaching farmers.
NWP recommends how the irrigated areas could be considerably expanded at very low cost by using pressurised closed conveyance pipelines, in addition to Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems and pressurised micro-irrigation.

4) Supply of water through “nature-based solutions”

The NWP places major importance on the supply of water via “nature-based solutions” like the rejuvenation of catchment areas, to be incentivised through compensation for ecosystem services.
Specially curated “blue-green infrastructure” like rain gardens and bio-swales, restored rivers with wet meadows, wetlands constructed for bio-remediation, urban parks, permeable pavements, green roofs etc are suggested for urban areas.

5) Sustainable and equitable management of groundwater

Information on aquifer boundaries , water storage capacities and flows provided in a user-friendly manner to stakeholders, assigned as custodians of their aquifers, would allow them to create protocols for effective management of groundwater.

6) Rights of Rivers

The NWP accords river protection and revitalisation prior and primary importance.
Steps to restore river flows include: Re-vegetation of catchments, regulation of groundwater extraction, river-bed pumping and mining of sand and boulders.
The NWP outlines a process to draft a Rights of Rivers Act, including their right to flow, to meander and to meet the sea.

7) Emphasis on water quality

The new NWP considers water quality as the most serious un-addressed issue in India today.
It proposes that every water ministry, at the Centre and states, include a water quality department.
The policy advocates adoption of state-of-the-art, low-cost, low-energy, eco-sensitive technologies for sewage treatment.
Widespread use of reverse osmosis has led to huge water wastage and adverse impact on water quality.
The policy wants RO units to be discouraged if the total dissolved solids count in water is less than 500mg/L.
It suggests a task force on emerging water contaminants to better understand and tackle the threats they are likely to pose.

8) Reforming governance of water

The policy makes radical proposals for improving the governance of water, which suffers from three kinds of issues: That between irrigation and drinking water, surface and groundwater, as also water and wastewater.
Government departments, working in silos, have generally dealt with just one side of these binaries.
Dealing with drinking water and irrigation in silos has meant that aquifers providing assured sources of drinking water dry up because the same aquifers are used for irrigation, which consumes much more water.
And when water and wastewater are separated in planning, the result is a fall in water quality.

9) Creation of National Water Commission

The NWP also suggests the creation of a unified multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder National Water Commission (NWC), which would become an exemplar for states to follow.
Governments should build enduring partnerships with primary stakeholders of water , who must become an integral part of the NWC and its counterparts in the states.

How Gujarat transformed from Water-deficit state to surplus state?

The Gujarat government created the state-level Bhaskaracharya Institute for Space Applications and Geoinformatics (BISAG) to aid in the supply of services and solutions for the deployment of map-based GeoSpatial Information Systems.
Micro-level check dams.
Macro-level projects particularly in the Saurashtra, Kutch, and North Gujarat areas.
Gujarat launched the Kutch branch canal from the Narmada Main canal, which helps provide water to the most distant parts.
Sujalam Sufalam Yojana: to irrigate the areas of North Gujarat.
The SAUNI Yojana (Saurashtra Narmada Avtaran Irrigation Yojana), which means literally “reincarnation of the Narmada River in the region,” was thus introduced.
Administrative and Governance reforms.

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Integrated Command and Control Center for Agriculture (ICCCA) mind map Recent News 80 Integrated Command and Control Centres (ICCCs) set up Part of Smart Cities Mission Announced by Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister When Smart Cities Mission launched June 25, 2015 Cities selected over 2016 to 2018 Initial deadline for first 20 smart cities 2021 Extended deadline 2023 Why To develop self-sustainable urban settlements Improve urban development process What Focus areas Construction of walkways Pedestrian crossings Cycling tracks Efficient waste-management systems Integrated traffic management Various indices to track urban development Ease of Living Index Municipal Performance Index City GDP framework Climate-Smart Cities assessment framework Integrated Command and Control Centre Monitors status of various amenities in real time Initially aimed at Water and power supply Sanitation Traffic movement Integrated building management City connectivity and Internet infrastructure Evolved to monitor various other parameters Linked to CCTNS network Acts as nerve centre for operations management Where 100 cities across India Part of Smart Cities Mission Who Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister announced Nodal point for smart services in a smart city How Setting up ICCCs in each smart city Monitors amenities in real time Uses data science and visualization Data science Focuses on specific data analytics questions Answers specific questions with predictions and forecasts Data visualization Creates visual representations of abstract data Makes data accessible for quick decisions Significance Improved business agility and productivity Lower cost of operations Improved operational competence Seamless workflow Proactive and responsive management Built-in intelligence AI and ML for automated data processing Challenges Digital divide impacting citizen engagement in smart cities Technological preparedness in pandemic management Way Forward Assessing current maturity level of ICCCs Identifying and addressing gaps Enhancing effectiveness of citizen services

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Fire safety in India – Challenges and Prevention

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Haven’t you seen the impacts heading in this article?

Great explanation and essay. This is exactly what I have been searching for.

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Water Crisis Essay

In this water crisis essay, we had describe about water crisis in details.

Water is the basic requirement for the survival and promotion of humans, animals, birds and vegetation.

Environmental pollution is a major cause of ‘water crisis’ as a result the underground layer increases rapidly.

In 1951, the per capita water availability was about 5177 cubic meters, this has now come down to around 1545 in 2011 (Source: Water Resources Division, TERI).

What is Water Crisis?

The lack of available water resources to meet the demands of water use within a region is called ‘water crisis’.

Around 2.8 billion people living in all continents of the world are affected by water crisis at least one month each year, over 1.2 billion people do not have access to clean water for drinking.

Global Scenario of Water Crisis:

Due to increasing demand for water resources, climate change and population explosion, there is a decrease in water availability.

It is estimated that in the Middle East region of Asia, most of North Africa, Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan and Spain, countries are expected to have water stress situation by 2040.

Along with this, many other countries including India, China, Southern Africa, USA and Australia may also face high water stress.

Status of Water Crisis in India – Water Crisis Essay:

In India, 330 million people or nearly a quarter of the country’s population are affected by severe drought due to two consecutive years of weak monsoon.

About 50% of the regions of India are experiencing drought like conditions, particularly in the western and southern states, with severe water crisis.

According to the Composite Water Management Index report released in 2018 by the NITI Aayog , 21 major cities of the country (Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad) and about 100 million people living in these cities are facing the severe problem of water crisis.

12% of India’s population is already living under ‘Day Zero’ conditions.

Day Zero: In order to attract the attention of all people to limit and manage water consumption in the city of Cape Town, the idea of Day Zero was introduced so as to increase management and awareness of limiting water use.

Causes of Water Crisis in India:

The problems of water crisis in India are mainly indicated in the southern and northwestern parts, the geographical location of these areas that it receives less rainfall, the southwest monsoon does not receive rainfall on the Chennai coast.

Similarly, by reaching the monsoon in the northwest, it becomes weak due to which the amount of rainfall also decreases.

Monsoon uncertainty in India is also a major cause of water crisis. In recent years, due to the impact of El-Nino, rainfall has decreased, due to which a situation of water crisis has arisen.

The agricultural ecology of India is favorable for crops that require more water for production, such as rice, wheat, sugarcane, jute and cotton etc.

The problem of water crisis is particularly prevalent in agricultural areas having these crops, the state of water crisis has arisen due to the strengthening of agriculture in Haryana and Punjab.

Serious efforts are not made to reuse water resources in Indian cities that is why the problem of water crisis in urban areas has reached a worrying situation.

Instead of reusing most of the water in cities, they are directly discharged into a river.

There is a lack of awareness among people about water conservation, the misuse of water is constantly increasing; Lawn, washing of cart, leaving the bottle open at the time of water use, etc.

Efforts to Conserve Water:

Under the Sustainable Development Goal, water availability and sustainable management is to be ensured for all people by the year 2030, the following efforts for water conservation are being made to meet this goal as follows:

At present, the use of low water crops is being encouraged to reduce the excessive use of water due to the intensification of agriculture.

In the Second Green Revolution, emphasis is being placed on low water intensity crops.

Efforts are being made to conserve water through dams, the government is also taking help from the World Bank for dam repair and reconstruction.

Guidelines have been issued by the government for construction of water tanks under the water supply program during the construction of buildings in the cities.

The NITI Aayog has released the overall water management index to inspire the effective use of water in states and union territories.

Precautions to avoid Water Crisis:

High-water crops such as wheat, rice, etc. should be transferred from coarse grains because about one-third of the water can be saved using these crops.

Also, the nutritional level of coarse cereals is also high, the use of low-water crops should be increased in areas with less rainfall.

In recent years, such efforts have been made by the Government of Tamil Nadu, water consumption efficiency should be increased, as it is still less than 30% in the best cases.

Public awareness is essential for water conservation because problem of water crisis has risen, however in some areas of America with less water availability than in countries like India.

RELATED ESSAYS:

SAVE WATER ESSAY | WATER POLLUTION ESSAY | WATER CONSERVATION ESSAY

Conclusion for Water Crisis Essay:

Water is an important natural resource as it maintains all living beings on the earth.

We use it for drinking and cooking, bathing and cleaning, surprisingly less than one percent of the total water supply is potable, but water pollution and misuse of water crisis lead to the ‘water crisis’.

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Gupshups is the place to find the most inspirational & motivation quotes, essay, speechs & lot more.

The global clean water crisis looms large

Water scarcity will intensify with climate and socioeconomic change, disproportionately impacting populations located in the Global South. So concludes a new Utrecht University article published in Nature Climate Change on 23 May 2024, which used a state-of-the-art global water quantity and quality model to estimate clean water scarcity until the end of the century.

Humans require clean water for drinking and sanitation purposes, but also for the production of food, energy and manufactured goods. As communities and policymakers grapple with water scarcity issues on the ground, researchers at Utrecht University aim to shed light on the escalating global clean water crisis.

Current and future water scarcity

Using simulations from a state-of-the-art water quantity and quality model, the authors assess present-day and future global water scarcity. "Climate change and socioeconomic developments have multi-faceted impacts on the availability and quality of, and demands for, water resources in the future," says lead author Dr. Edward Jones. "Changes in these three aspects are crucial for evaluating future water scarcity."

The study estimates that 55% of the global population currently lives in areas that experience a lack of clean water in at least one month per year. "By the end of the century, this may be as high as 66%," remarks Jones.

Strong regional differences in future water scarcity

While global water scarcity is projected to intensify in the future, both the changes and impacts will not occur equally across all world regions. Future increases in water scarcity in Western Europe and North America, for example, are concentrated in just a few months of the year -- predominantly driven by water quantity aspects. Conversely, water scarcity increases in developing countries are typically more widespread in space and persist for a larger portion of the year.

Jones remarks, "Increases in future exposure are largest in the Global South. These are typically driven by a combination of rapid population and economic growth, climate change and deteriorating water quality."

Quality: the invisible part of water scarcity

Water quality -- despite being crucial for safe water use -- remains an under-represented component of water scarcity assessments. "Previous assessments still predominantly focus on water quantity aspects only," explains Jones. "Yet, the safe use of water also depends on the quality."

Therefore, a key aim of this study was also to normalise the inclusion of water quality in water scarcity assessments -- and in the design of management strategies for alleviating water scarcity.

Jones concludes, "The lack of clean water presents a systemic risk to both humans and ecosystems, which is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Our work highlights that, alongside substantially reducing our water demands, we must place an equally strong focus on eliminating water pollution in order to turn the tide on the global water crisis."

Environmental Issues
Drought Research
Resource Shortage
Environmental Policies
World Development
Land Management
Water scarcity
Global warming controversy
Climate engineering
Global climate model
Climate change mitigation
Scientific opinion on climate change
Temperature record of the past 1000 years

Story Source:

Materials provided by Utrecht University . Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

Edward R. Jones, Marc F. P. Bierkens, Michelle T. H. van Vliet. Current and future global water scarcity intensifies when accounting for surface water quality . Nature Climate Change , 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41558-024-02007-0

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Thirsty in paradise: Water crises are a growing problem across the Caribbean islands

Assistant Professor of Emergency and Disaster Health Systems, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Disclosure statement

Farah Nibbs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Maryland, Baltimore County provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.

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In the popular imagination, the Caribbean is paradise, an exotic place to escape to. But behind the images of balmy beaches and lush hotel grounds lies a crisis, the likes of which its residents have never experienced.

Caribbean islands are in a water crisis , and their governments have warned that water scarcity may become the new norm .

Within the past five years, every island in the region has experienced some sort of water scarcity. For example, Trinidad is experiencing its worst drought in recent memory , and residents are under water restrictions through at least the end of June 2024, with fines for anyone who violates the rules.

Dominica, considered the nature island of the Caribbean for its mountain rain forests, is seeing a significant decrease in freshwater resources and increasingly frequent water shortages. In Grenada, known as the spice isle, drought has affected water systems throughout the island.

An apartment building with large blue water barrels sitting outside each unit on platforms similar to where you might see a window air conditioner.

Jamaica is also facing water restrictions and has had to resort to water shutoffs in recent years, limiting water availability to a few hours per day in some areas. St. Vincent and St. Kitts have had to ration water. Barbados has experienced several water bans in recent years.

In fact, recent data shows that the Caribbean is one of the most water-stressed regions in the world.

I study the intersection of critical infrastructure and disasters , particularly in the Caribbean. Safe water is essential for all human activity and public health. That’s why it is important to understand the root causes of the water crises and to find effective, affordable ways to improve water supply systems.

3 reasons water demand is outstripping supply

Changing precipitation patterns and droughts are straining Caribbean water supplies, but water demand has also been outstripping supply for a number of reasons.

1. Rapid urbanization and industrialization

The Caribbean is one of the most rapidly urbanizing regions in the world. About three-quarters of its population lives in cities , and that percentage is rising, adding pressure on public water systems.

At the same time, increased industrialization and commercialization of agriculture have degraded water quality and in some cases encroached on sensitive water catchment areas, affecting the soil’s capacity to retain water .

People on a beach with a large airplane landing and hotels in the background on Sint Maarten.

This competing demand for limited fresh water has reduced stream flows and led to water being drawn down from sensitive sources. In Dennery North, a major farming community in St. Lucia , water shortages have left residents collecting water from rivers and other sources for their homes and farms.

Unregulated extraction of groundwater can also worsen the problem. Many islands depend on groundwater.

For example, 90% of water supply in Barbados comes from groundwater, while in Jamaica it is 84% . However, increasing demand and changes in annual rainfall patterns are affecting the ability of aquifers or groundwater to recharge . As a result, supply isn’t keeping up with demand. This is a huge problem for the island of Utila, located off the coast of Honduras, where the current rate of aquifer recharge is only 2.5% annually . For comparison, Barbados has a recharge rate of 15% to 30% of annual rainfall .

2. Water-intensive tourism industry

It’s no secret that the Caribbean is a popular tourist destination, and tourist economies depend on vast quantities of water .

Even during water rationing, water is diverted to hotels and other tourist-dependent sites first. That can leave local residents without water for hours or days at a time and facing fines if they violate use restrictions.

Tourism not only increases the consumption of water but also the pollution of water resources. Building golf courses to attract more tourists further increases tourism’s water demand and runoff.

3. Weak water infrastructure governance

Another problem water systems face is weak governance that leads to excessive loss of treated water before it even reaches the customer.

A well-performing water utility will usually have water losses – known as nonrevenue water – below 30% . In the Caribbean, the average nonrevenue water is 46%, with some as high as 75% .

The reasons range from lack of appropriate management practices to metering inaccuracies, leaks and theft.

Climate change and extreme weather worsen water insecurity

These troubled water systems can struggle on good days. Worsening extreme weather, such as hurricanes and flooding, can damage infrastructure, leading to long outages and expensive repairs .

The Caribbean is the second-most disaster-prone region in the world . The islands face frequent earthquakes, landslides, devastating hurricanes and other destructive storms. As global temperatures and sea levels rise , the risk of extreme weather and storm surge causing erosion, flooding and saltwater contamination increases.

Three months after Hurricane Maria hit in 2017, well over 14% of the Caribbean population was still without potable water. Hurricane Dorian in 2019 left Grand Bahama Utility Co. and the country’s Water and Sewerage Corp. with U$54 million in damages. A year after Dorian, WSC was “ still working on restoring operations to pre-Hurricane Dorian levels.”

How hybrid rainwater harvesting can help

Improving water access in the Caribbean means working on all of those challenges. Better governance and investment can help reduce water loss from theft and leaks. Government and social pressure and educating tourists can help reduce waste at hotels and resorts.

There are also ways to increase water supply. One involves being more strategic about how the islands use a practice the region has relied on for centuries: rainwater harvesting .

Rainwater harvesting involves capturing rainwater, often from where it runs off rooftops, and storing it for future use. It can replace irrigation, or the water can be treated for household uses.

A large tank with an intake pipe above and tubes running from the bottom sits on a cement slab in a yard next to a fence with wildflowers along it.

Right now, rainwater harvesting is not managed as part of the islands’ centralized water management system. Instead, households bear the cost to finance, build and maintain their own systems. Finding technical support can be difficult, leaving households to contend with seasonal variations in water quantity and quality. That makes risks to drinking water safety difficult to identify.

If rainwater harvesting were instead combined with central water systems in a managed hybrid water model, I believe that could help expand safe rainwater harvesting and address water issues in the region.

It’s a relatively new concept, and integrating decentralized sources can be complex , including requiring separate pipes , but it has potential to reduce water stress . Decentralized sources, such as rainwater harvesting, groundwater or recycled gray water , could serve as backup water sources during shortages or provide water for nonpotable purposes, such as flushing toilets or irrigation, to reduce demand for treated water.

Engineers in Australia are weighing the potential of hybrid water systems to help face the challenges of delivering secure, safe and sustainable water in the future.

Fulfilling a human right in the islands

The World Health Organization has declared that access to a sufficient, safe and reliable water supply is a fundamental human right , and that to accomplish this, water suppliers have a responsibility to provide adequate quantities of potable water.

Hybrid water systems could help ensure water safety and security for island communities and improve the water systems’ resilience amid the human and environmental pressures facing the Caribbean.

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A water crisis that software can’t solve

Monday, 20 May 2024

Nearly dry Nallurahalli Lake in Bengaluru. The city gets plenty of rain, but it did not properly adapt as its soaring population strained traditional water sources. — Photos: ©2024 The New York Times Company

THE water tankers seeking to fill their bellies bounced past the dry lakes of India’s booming technology capital. Their bleary-eyed drivers waited in line to suck what they could from wells dug deep into dusty lots between app offices and apartment towers named for bougainvillea – all built before sewage and water lines could reach them.

At one well, where neighbours lamented the loss of a mango grove, a handwritten logbook listed the water runs of a crisis: 3.15 and 4.10 one morning; 12.58, 2.27 and 3.29 the next.

“I get 50 calls a day,” said Prakash Chudegowda, a tanker driver in south Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore, as he connected a hose to the well.

“I can only get to 15.”

The Silicon Valley of South Asia has a nature issue – a pain point that software cannot solve. In the sprawl beyond Bengaluru’s core, where dreams of tech riches usually grow, schools lack water to flush toilets. Washing machines have gone quiet. Showers are being postponed, and children with only dirty water to drink are being hospitalised with typhoid fever.

The big problem afflicting Bengaluru is not a lack of rain (it gets plenty), but rather what often holds this giant, energetic nation back: arthritic governance.

As the city rushed toward the digital future, tripling its population to 15 million since the 1990s and building a lively tech ecosystem, water management fell behind and never caught up as otherwise healthy aquifers were drawn dry by the unchecked spread of urban bore wells.

Failures of environmental stewardship are common across a country with severe pollution and an acute need for economic growth to provide for 1.4 billion people, spanning political parties and India’s north-south divide.

But Bengaluru’s water struggle is especially withering for many – and motivating for some who have water sales or reform in mind – because the city sees itself as an innovator. And in this case, the causes and solutions are well known.

“There is no crisis of water availability,” said Vishwanath Srikantaiah, a water researcher and urban planner in Bengaluru.

“It’s a clear-cut crisis of state failure.”

Viewed another way, he added in an interview at his home, where books about water and rivers were stacked nearly to the ceiling, it is a crisis caused by a lack of imagination.

As public policy experts tell it, Bengaluru and the broader state of Karnataka have been too slow to plan for growth, too divided across agencies and too rigid in their reliance on pumping water uphill from reservoirs along the Kaveri River more than 80km away.

Despite a long history of local hydrology – Nadaprabhu Kempegowda, the 16th-century founder of Bengaluru, built hundreds of cascading lakes for irrigation – officials have mostly stuck with the traditional engineering option that their predecessors turned to in the 1950s and ’60s.

That is the case despite its challenges and expense. The energy cost alone for pumping eats up 75% of the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board’s revenue, while supplying only around half of what the city needs.

The rest, for decades, has come from bore wells – holes about 15cm wide that act like straws for water from aquifers below.

An authority separate from the water board has punched 14,000 of them into the ground, half of which are now dry, according to officials.

Experts estimate that residents have drilled another 450,000 to 500,000 into the cityscape, without the government knowing where or having a clear sense of their impact.

In much of the city, the wells are like doorbells, plentiful but seemingly invisible until someone points them out.

Drilling failures appear as cutout circles on quieter streets; successes are often covered in flowers, with a black hose snaking into a home down the street.

Spending a day in the cab of Chudegowda’s tanker truck offered a glimpse of how the ad hoc system works.

At one stop, drivers wrote their times in a logbook while cameras watched how much they took.

At another the supply was slow and organised: a half-dozen drivers took 20-minute turns for fill-ups of around 6,000 liters just a few steps from a lake depleted to a puddle. At a third, a building owner sold a load to Chudegowda without the wait.

“Every minute counts,” he said as he climbed out of the truck.

His customers ranged from a bra factory with 100 workers to a small apartment building, all within a few miles to maximise profit.

He charged each up to 1,500 rupees for each tanker load, more than double the going rate from a few months ago, which he considered justified because costs had gone up.

Drills – easily hired from companies with storefronts across the city – often fail to find water or have to go deeper now, which means more electricity and gas for the pumps pulling precious liquid from the earth.

The effects, while not at “Dune”-like levels, have become more visible in recent weeks, especially in the tech corridors, with their blur of luxury apartments, slums, mobile phone stores, malls, in vitro fertilisation clinics and shimmering offices.

In Whitefield, a busy software hub, Sumedha Rao, a teacher at a new public school, asked her class of 12-year-olds about their experiences with water scarcity.

The hallways were painted in bright colours with words of encouragement – resilience, citizenship, collaboration. In class, they were asked how often they have water at home.

“One day a week, ma’am,” said a girl with pigtails.

“We just have a bucket,” said a boy near the back.

“There’s no water in the bore wells,” shouted another.

Many take small amounts of drinking water from school taps for their families – only one water bottle per child, because it is all the school can spare. Behind a play area the colour and consistency of ground ginger sat a hulking pile of metal: a broken bore well.

“The motor stopped working,” said Shekar Venkataswamy, a physical education teacher with a brigand’s moustache.

Walking toward his home behind the school, he pointed to a dry hole where drilling failed, and one where it worked. A few thousand families take turns using the water for an hour each, with an elaborate schedule that is tightly managed.

Community leaders expressed pride in how they were handling the crisis, softening the blows of sacrifice. Many others have been inspired to broader action.

One morning, four tech workers who had become water activists showed up in a northern corner of the city where Srikantaiah, the water researcher, had worked with the local community to rejuvenate a once trash-strewn lake.

A small network of gurgling filters and pipes sends out 200,000 litres of potable water per day.

“It will soon be 600,000,” Srikantaiah said. And the price per customer: nearly one-third of what tanker drivers are charging.

The tech workers said they planned to share the details with neighbours and officials, to spread the word that a lake, using rainwater and lightly treated sewage, could be turned into a safe, affordable, reliable water source.

In an interview at his office, the chair of the water board, Ram Prasath Manohara, 43, a seasoned government administrator installed three months ago, embraced the idea.

Acknowledging that some past officials had thought narrowly about water management, he said he hoped to attract public and private money for a more innovative approach, mixing data-driven methods that would revive lakes to let aquifers recharge and would expand rainwater harvesting and conservation.

A dry patch

Residents filling up containers with subsidised water poured from a tanker truck..

Residents fill up containers with subsidized water poured from a tanker truck in Bengaluru, India, on March 19, 2024. (Atul Loke/The New York Times)

Workers digging a bore well. Bengaluru’s otherwise healthy aquifers have been drawn dry by the unchecked spread of such wells.

Workers dig a bore well in Bengaluru, India, on March 18, 2024. (Atul Loke/The New York Times)

A resident carrying a container with subsidised water in Bengaluru, India.

A resident carries containers with subsidized water in Bengaluru, India, on March 19, 2024. (Atul Loke/The New York Times)

Residents fill up containers with subsidised water at a government distribution center in Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore. — Photos: ©2024 The New York Times Company

Residents fill up containers with subsidized water at a government distribution center in Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore, India, on March 19, 2024. (Atul Loke/The New York Times)

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Luxury Housing Planned For South Maui Prompts Concerns Over Water, Traffic And Affordability

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The $1.4 billion project envisions 975 high-end homes in and around the Wailea resort community that would cater to seasonal residents.

A developer’s plan to construct up to 975 mostly luxury homes for part-time residents in South Maui is raising concerns among advocates for affordable housing, water, cultural preservation, wildfire evacuation routes and traffic reduction, among other issues.

The proposal comes at a time when Maui is struggling to house hundreds of fire survivors on an island that had a severe housing crisis before the Aug. 8 inferno.

Ledcor Maui, the developer, put a 2,113-page draft environmental impact statement out for public review with comments due Thursday. The study describes a $1.39 billion project spanning eight parcels, seven in the Wailea Resort community and one just north of Kilohana Drive and the Wailea Fire Station in Kihei.

The single- and multi-family homes would be built over 15 to 20 years. Most would be market-priced and intended for seasonal residents, with a portion set aside as workforce housing. The average home price on Maui hovers between $1.4 million and $1.5 million, according to real estate companies that track the housing market.

Under county law, one workforce housing unit must be built for every four market-rate units, although developers can bypass constructing them by purchasing offsite affordable housing credits or paying fees to Maui County’s Affordable Housing Fund.

During a May 14 Maui Planning Commission meeting , Ledcor Maui’s David Goode said the company expects to create 225 workforce housing units, with at least 75 of those units built on-site. Another 75 would be built off-site and Ledcor would pay the county an in-lieu fee for the remaining 75.

Each workforce unit is expected to cost roughly $240,000 to build so Ledcor would expect to pay the county between $17 million and $18 million.

“It’s a lot of money,” said Goode, former director of the Maui Department of Public Works.

Homes for Part-Timers

No one from Ledcor Maui made themselves available for an interview. Charlene Kauhane, who handles public relations for the firm, referred to the draft environmental impact statement in response to questions.

Ledcor anticipates that about 90% of its market-rate units would be used by people who live part-time on Maui and 10% would serve full-time residents.

That ratio didn’t sit well with people like South Maui resident and military veteran Rick Chapura, who testified during the May 14 meeting.

The Maui Meadows neighborhood faced severe flooding during recent storms.

“How do they suggest in any way, shape or form that they are alleviating pent-up housing demand” as the DEIS states, Chapura said.

The project is “just adding more high-priced housing that is not for the people on Maui. It’s for other people,” he said.

Albert Perez, executive director of Maui Tomorrow , said the DEIS contradicts itself by saying it’s going to help relieve housing pressures on Maui by building homes for people who primarily live off-island.

“We have a surplus of luxury housing on Maui,” Perez said in an interview. “They’re going to be taking up infrastructure that we should be prioritizing for truly affordable housing.”

Local people are getting priced out of Maui, he said. “It’s essentially gentrification.”

Taxes, Jobs and Water

The project could spawn economic benefits at a time when Maui is struggling with a drop-off in tourism post-fire and contending with numerous lawsuits connected to the tragedy that claimed 101 lives, developers say.

It would generate a substantial boost in property taxes collected by the county and result in new resident spending, according to the DEIS. The massive construction project would also create jobs.

Shane Awai, who represents District Council 50 of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades , supports the Ledcor project.

“I have seen people move away because they don’t have jobs in our trades,” Awai said during public testimony. “This is an opportunity to have jobs and to keep our people here.”

Maui County is proposing that irrigation for all its customers — residential, commercial and resorts — be limited to three days a week as part of its new conservation plan.

There’s no way to stay on Maui without good-paying jobs, he said, adding that he moved from Molokai to Maui three decades ago for work and has put three children through college on his union painter salary.

Jobs aside, one of the main concerns some people have expressed about the project is how the addition of nearly 1,000 households could affect Maui’s limited water supply.

Water for the Ledcor homes would come from the Central Maui system , operated by the county Department of Water Supply and sourced from the Iao and Waihee aquifers located under the West Maui mountains.

“No significant negative impacts to groundwater resources are expected” from the development, the DEIS said.

Members of the public who have testified orally or in writing have questioned that conclusion.

‘Show Me the Water’

The draft study notes that of all the aquifers on the island, Haiku’s has the greatest unused amount of water that could support demand on the Central Maui system and could relieve some of the reliance on the Iao and Waihee aquifers if need be.

The prospect of Haiku having to supply underground water to owners of expensive homes in Wailea did not go over well with some residents who live there.

Testifying at a scoping meeting on Feb. 23, North Shore resident Lafayette Young said rainfall has dropped substantially, from 80 inches a year to 60 inches, during the many years he’s lived in the area. With climate change, rising temperatures and drought, the aquifer’s ability to recharge will likely lessen, Young said.

“Show me the water. Where’s the water going to come from for this project? That would be our primary concern,” Young, a director with the Haiku Community Association , said during the meeting.

Phil Lowenthal, vice president of the association, said people frequently say that Haiku has plenty of water because it’s often rainy or cloud-covered. But that’s mistaken, in his view.

“They gave up on having a water meter list. You can’t even get on the list anymore for water in Haiku,” Lowenthal said. “It’s a real issue.”

‘What World Are We Living In?’

Daniel Kanahele is concerned about how the development could impact cultural resources in the area and said more archeological review is needed. During the May 14 hearing before the Planning Commission, he suggested the developer create a robust archeological inventory to reduce the chance of the project being challenged in court, “which has happened over and over and over again.”

“You waste a lot of money in legal fees,” Kanahele said.

He also suggested that Ledcor create a preservation area to connect culturally significant areas to one another if the land gets developed.

Charlene Schulenberg, president of the Kihei Community Association , said at the commission meeting that South Maui lacks adequate infrastructure to handle the influx of nearly 1,000 homes, not to mention other nearby housing developments that are in the pipeline.

“It’s barely adequate right now. We don’t have a way to evacuate. It’s like, what world are we living in? We’re living in post-fires,” Schulenberg said.

She was referring to Piilani Highway and South Kihei Road, the two main arteries in and out of South Maui. Piilani Highway is often traffic-congested. And flood-prone, two-lane South Kihei Road can be impassable during rainstorms or bogged down by traffic.

Mike Moran of Kihei noted that South Kihei Road will be underwater later this century, according to sea-level rise projections .

“Let’s not have one more situation like we had the tragedy in Lahaina. We saw what happened there. No way out. That’s what will happen here,” Moran said.

After the first 350 homes are built, the draft study says Ledcor will contribute to highway improvements as agreed to with the state Department of Transportation, including widening Piilani Highway to provide another northbound lane for about 1,650 feet and widening the Mapu Place approach to create more lanes.

The project area is mostly covered by non-native grasses, shrubland and kiawe trees.

The endangered Hawaiian hoary bat frequents the area and was found on two parcels. To avoid disturbing its habitat, woody plants greater than 15 feet tall will not be disturbed, trimmed or removed during the bat birthing and pup-rearing season, according to the DEIS.

Endangered seabirds are also thought to fly over the project site. To minimize impacts on them, the developer plans to shield and face all outdoor lighting downward in compliance with Maui County’s outdoor lighting law.

After the public comment period closes Thursday, Ledcor’s consultants will incorporate the feedback, and then update and finalize the document. The final environmental impact statement will go to the Planning Commission for a vote.

Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.

Civil Beat’s coverage of environmental issues on Maui is supported by grants from the Center for Disaster Philanthropy and the Hawaii Wildfires Recovery Fund, the Knight Foundation and the Doris Duke Foundation.

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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is facing the AI arms race with urgency—and maybe a little paranoia

With Microsoft’s partnership and $13 billion-plus investment in OpenAI, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has given the tech giant a clear lead in the AI era.

Good morning. In his decade as CEO of Microsoft , Satya Nadella has transformed a troubled tech giant into the world’s most valuable company, with a market cap of more than $3.1 trillion. In his 32 years at Microsoft, though, Nadella has lived through four major technology platform shifts—from PCs to the web, mobile, cloud computing and now AI—and he knows how the company struggled to compete after some of them. That may explain the air of urgency and mild paranoia that Nadella projects in Fortune ’s latest cover story on Nadella by my colleague Jeremy Kahn .

As Nadella told Jeremy: “When the paradigm shifts, do you have something to contribute? Because there is no God-given right to exist if you don’t have anything relevant.”

With Microsoft’s partnership and $13 billion-plus investment in OpenAI, Nadella has given the tech giant a clear lead in the AI era. (The Microsoft Build developer conference kicks off tomorrow and is likely to feature several significant AI-fueled upgrades.) As Jeremy points out in his article, the company’s ties to OpenAI also come with risk, as we saw when OpenAI’s board fired—and then begrudgingly rehired—CEO Sam Altman last year. The recent departure of OpenAI researchers Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike also sparked concern since it led to the dissolution of a team focused on the safety of hypothetical future AI systems that would be more capable than any human. And plenty of rivals are rushing in to compete.

No one is more aware of the risks than Nadella. He lived through the Microsoft antitrust case in the late 1990s that forced the company to open up its Windows operating system to competition after it was found guilty of trying to monopolize the browser market. That experience may have factored into the company’s recent decision to unbundle its Teams videoconference app from its Office software (though the still-looming threat of EU antitrust action was likely a bigger impetus). He saw Microsoft make failed bets on media players, cell phones, tablets and other technologies. He notices when customers give a piece of their business, however small, to a rival.

But Nadella is perhaps most sensitive to public scrutiny, telling Jeremy that what keeps him up at night is the possibility that his company might lose “its license to operate”—the one that relies on maintaining public trust by being a force for good in the communities in which it operates. Maintaining that license means investing in local economies, as he recently demonstrated with several announcements in Asia. It means figuring out how to meet Microsoft’s 2030 goals to become carbon negative when its AI push has sent CO2 emissions up 30% since 2020. And throughout his tenure, it has meant trying to create and sustain a culture that’s humble, hungry and ready to grow. Check out Jeremy’s story here .

More news below.

Diane Brady [email protected] Follow on LinkedIn

Musk’s loss is others’ gain

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s shock decision to lay off the entire team responsible for the company’s “Supercharger” system means the rest of the industry gets to snap up experienced and passionate workers. It’s the “single greatest talent acquisition opportunity in the industry,” says the founder of one EV infrastructure company. Musk may be realizing his mistake: He is reportedly rehiring some of the workers he laid off. Fortune

‘Quantum Valley’

Nvidia cofounder Curtis Priem is donating $75 million to Rensselaer Polytechnic University so it can buy an IBM-manufactured quantum computer. The Troy, N.Y.-based school will be the first university anywhere in the world to have such a device. Priem hopes the investment will supercharge tech investment in the area, turning the Hudson Valley into “Quantum Valley.” The Wall Street Journal

Is China’s rescue package big enough?

On Friday, Beijing unveiled a $42 billion scheme to rescue the country’s slumping real estate sector, yet analysts worry the unprecedented measures still don’t go far enough. “Any game-changing housing easing measures…would likely require significantly more funding,” Goldman Sachs economists wrote, citing previous estimates that $1.1 trillion may be needed to get the sector back on track. Bloomberg

AROUND THE WATERCOOLER

American stock markets have dominated global trading for most of the last 120 years. Here’s how other big economies measure up by Nicolas Rapp and Matt Heimer

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IMAGES

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COMMENTS

How can we solve the global water crisis?
As the four co-chairs of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, our goal is to transform the world's understanding of the economics and governance of water, placing a much stronger emphasis on equity, justice, effectiveness, and democracy. We can still redefine our relationship with water and redesign our economies to value water as ...
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Water stress or scarcity occurs when demand for safe, usable water in a given area exceeds the supply. On the demand side, the vast majority—roughly 70 percent—of the world's freshwater is ...
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This essay on water crisis causes and solutions embarks on a comprehensive exploration of the causes that underlie the water crisis and examines the profound consequences it imposes on societies and ecosystems. Furthermore, it delves into a myriad of potential solutions and strategies that hold the key to mitigating this critical issue ...
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from a water-related illness. Collectively, women in Africa . spend 200 million hours every day walking for water. 4 Yearly, children . miss 443 million . school days because of the global water crisis. 5. Children suffer . from 90% of . diseases caused . by unsafe water and sanitation. 5. 2.2. billion people. around the world lack access to ...
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Water Shortage: a Global Crisis. Water, the elixir of life, is a finite resource essential for all living organisms on Earth. Yet, despite its undeniable importance, water shortage has become a critical global issue. This essay delves into the causes, consequences, and potential solutions to the growing problem of water scarcity.
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54% of the country's groundwater is declining rapidly than it is being replenished. India's water table is declining in most regions. Also, there is a presence of toxic elements like fluoride, arsenic, mercury, even uranium in our groundwater. Water levels in India's major reservoirs have fallen to 21% of the average of the last decade.
Water Crisis Essay for Students
In this water crisis essay, we had describe about water crisis in details. Water is the basic requirement for the survival and promotion of humans, animals, birds and vegetation. Environmental pollution is a major cause of 'water crisis' as a result the underground layer increases rapidly. In 1951, the per capita water availability was ...
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For a decade, Terri Ann Otani made tens of thousands of dollars in donations to political candidates in the names of her family members, according to her relatives.
Luxury Housing Planned For South Maui Prompts Concerns Over Water
The proposal comes at a time when Maui is struggling to house hundreds of fire survivors on an island that had a severe housing crisis before the Aug. 8 inferno.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella paranoid about AI arms race
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How can we solve the global water crisis?

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5 ways to avert a global water crisis

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2. Share water

3. Transform agriculture

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5. Build resilience

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