reply to post by pointlessness
The Water Crisis
Water could be an issue for the future ... strange isn't bearing in mind around 70% of the Earth's surface is covered in the stuff.
Only around
2% of the water on Earth is
fresh and 70% of that is unavailable as it is in ice-caps and glaciers.
Out of all the water on Earth less than 1% is actually available for human consumption once you take away water that is not accessible (remote areas,
deep springs, glaciers, etc).
It is already common knowledge that there are nations across the globe without access to safe drinking water. Sources put this at
over 750 million people worldwide without
access to safe water. Add to that that 2.5 billion people (one in every third person) so not have access to safe sanitation. 700,000 children die
every year due to unsafe drinking water.
Demand for water has tripled over the past 50 years. Every day more than 30,000 children die before their fifth birthday from hunger or through
preventable disease, with drought a major aggravating factor.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says that in the next 20 years almost 50% of the world’s population will be living in
areas of 'high water stress'.
Ten countries across the world control 60% of Earth's
freshwater supply. These are (in order): Brazil; Russia; Canada; USA; Indonesia; China; Colombia; Peru; India; and the Democratic Republic of the
Congo.
In China (contested) it is Tibet that owns a great deal of the available freshwater.
Almost 50%
of the world's population depend on the flow of freshwater from Tibet. Is it any surprise that China is pushing so hard for control? Giant
waterfalls, a thousand lakes, huge glaciers; Tibet has more freshwater than anywhere outside of Greenland and Antarctica.
As the population grows and our resources become more scarce water control and export is going to become a powerful tool. Demand will increase whilst
supply stays roughly the same.
According to the UN, around 30 nations will be in
'water scarcity' in the next ten years. Eighteen of them are in the Middle East and North Africa, including Egypt, Israel, Somalia, Libya and Yemen.
Eighteen countries, many of which are already at war (civil or terrorist related) and adding water scarcity to that could heighten tensions much
further.
Could water become the next oil? Currently the West depends on the Middle East for oil
(
despite Canada having one of the largest reserves)
but it could it be flipped on its head where the Middle East then becomes solely reliant on the West to survive?
All the best,