GineersNow Engineering Magazine September 2016 Issue No 007

The Ugly Truth About Our
Global Water Crisis
Photo by alarabiya
Dissecting the world’s problem with
water availability, supply, usage and
demand
Anyone who has seen a map of the
world can easily conclude that it is
bluer than greener, signifying that
the majority of the Earth is water.
According to the United States
Geological Survey Water Science
School, about 71 percent of the
Earth’s surface is water-covered,
with the oceans holding about 96.5
percent of all Earth’s water.
There is roughly 326 million cubic
miles (1.332 billion cubic kilometers)
of water on Earth. Over 95% of
this quantity is comprised of the
groundwater aquifers, with the
remaining 5% as rain, rivers, and
lakes. The huge quantity of this
water at our disposal, however, is not
suitable for drinking. That fact alone
and a couple other complex reasons
connected to the humans’ interaction
with water, the growing population,
the uneven water distribution largely
contribute to the perennial global
water crisis. And engineers are up for
the challenge to turn this all around.
A report from the World Bank
indicated that 80 countries suffer
from water shortages and 2 billion
people lack access to clean water.
This is supported by a separate from
the World Health Organization, who
says that 1 billion people lack enough
water to simply meet their basic
needs.
The Global Water Availability and
Usage
For every person on the planet, there
is an allotted water of about 1,700
cubic meters. This is alarmingly low
number, since the Water Stress Index
categorizes any region with less than
1,700 cubic meters per capita as
“water stressed.”
There is also a problem on the water
distribution among countries in terms
of location and availability. Certain
areas of the world do not have
adequate access to water and they
do not have water equally available
throughout the year. This map below
shows the water availability per
person within a country.
The blue countries in the map show
that they have more readily available
freshwater supply, but such fact is
still illusive. These countries with high
annual averages of per capita per
year experience alternating seasons
of drought and monsoons. Notable,
the availability of freshwater in North
Africa is a cause of alarm.
When it comes to usage, there lies
a difference between developing
countries and developed ones. For
developing countries, 90% of their
water usage goes to agriculture, 5%
for industry, and 5% for urban areas.
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SEPTEMBER 2016
Clean Water Technologies