Water scarcity could overwhelm the next generation.

• Author: Sawin, Janet L.
• Position: Environmental Intelligence

Up to 7 billion people in 60 countries--more than the whole present population of the world--will face water scarcity within the next half-century, according to the United Nations' World Water Development Report released in March. The UN report is the most complete appraisal of water resources to date. Other reports released the same month offer dire projections of the impacts of water scarcity on human health, the environment, and global political stability(1)

Demand for fresh water has tripled in the past 50 years, and is continuing to rise as a result of population growth and economic development. About 70 percent of the demand is for agriculture. But increasing water use is not just a function of the greater number of people needing to eat and drink; it also results from pollution and misuse of available water supplies, both directly via dumping or runoff of effluents into water, and indirectly via pollution of air and soil. The damage is accelerated by wetlands destruction and other abuses-including human-caused global warming. According to the UN report, "recent estimates suggest that climate change will account for about 20 percent of the increase in global water scarcity" in coming decades.

Water mismanagement has become a crisis of governance that will impact heavily on public health and the environment, while heightening tensions and conflicts over declining resources. Worldwide, the greatest impacts will be on the poor, who are most vulnerable to water-borne illness--which further perpetuates their poverty. At present, 1.1 billion people lack access to clean water and 2.4 billion lack adequate sanitation. In 2000, an estimated 2.2 million people, most of them infants or children under five, died from waterrelated diseases.

It is not only the poor who are at risk, however. Around the same time the UN report was issued, two reports published in...