The Global Water Crisis.

Water, the single most important commodity on earth. Without it we would die, but whilst we have it, we are wasteful. The survival and success of our civilization is dependent on our ability to harness and redistribute water. Whilst in the West we have the privilege of being able to access as much water as we want, at the turn of a tap, this is a façade behind which the global water crisis hides. What is unknown to most of the general public is that we are living amid a very real crisis which is bound to get worse, global water scarcity.

Despite living on the “Blue Planet”, by 2025 the UN has estimated that 2/3 of humanity will live in a water-stressed area. Despite 71% of Earth’s surface being covered in water, 97% of the water on Earth is saltwater, which is undrinkable. This means that only 3% of all the water on Earth is fit for human consumption. Of this 3%, 2% is trapped in ice, so for all the water on Earth, humans can only drink 1% of it. Whilst this does not seem like much, it is still a vast amount. The source of the global water crisis is thus not the quantity of fresh water in the world, but the concentration of this freshwater, with some regions being rich with freshwater and other not. Kuwait is one of the poorest countries in terms of freshwater per capita with just 10m per capita. This can be compared to Canada which is one of the richest countries in terms of freshwater per capita with 100,000m of freshwater per capita (10 thousand times as much as Kuwait). It is due to this narrow concentration of freshwater that means that people around the world cannot satisfy the most basic human need, the need to drink water. According to the World Health Organisation and UNICEF, 2.2 billion people globally cannot access safely managed drinking water.

In some instances, the possibility of water running out in some regions has almost materialised. In 2017, Cape Town faced the prospect of what was coined “Day Zero”, the day that the city would run out of water. To avoid the very real threat of this happening 4 million people were cut off from a water supply to conserve the little reserves of water that Cape Town had left. This was not an isolated incident. Brazil’s São Paulo, a city of 20 million people, faced its own Day Zero in 2015. The city had to turn off its water supply for 12 hours a day to conserve water. In 2008, Barcelona had to import tankers of freshwater from France as water shortages become a reality. Melbourne, Jakarta, London, Beijing, Istanbul, Tokyo, Bangalore, and Mexico City are all cities that are projected to face their own “Day Zero” within the upcoming decades. The Economic Forum has stated that the global water crisis is one of the greatest risks to humanity.

Water scarcity has caused countries like Libya, South Sudan, Yemen, Somalia and Djibouti to experience droughts and famines for years. These droughts and famines are leading to or perpetuating international and domestic conflicts, with water-related conflicts seeing a 4-fold increase within the last decade. Be it conflicts in India and Pakistan, Latin America, Palestine-Israel or Yemen, water has to some extent played a part in these conflicts. With the United Nations identifying 276 transboundary river basins and 200 transboundary aquifers, as water scarcity increases, it is very likely that the number of water-related conflicts will only increase around the world.

The effects of these droughts and conflicts are disproportionately affecting women and children. Children are vulnerable to diseases from dirty water, which they have no option but to drink, which has meant that a child dies every 2 minutes due to a water-related disease. Women are affected by water scarcity as they often bear the burden of having to find and collect water for their families, as water scarcity has meant that a lot of areas lack enough water for their populations. These journeys globally equate to an estimated 200 million hours each day.

It is no coincidence that some of the poorest countries in the world are those that have the highest water scarcity. Without clean, easily accessible water, families and communities are locked in generational poverty. Children are forced to drop out of school, usually due to illness, and parents struggle to make a living. A staggering 260 billion dollars are lost every year from women not having careers because they have to find water for their families. Avoided deaths alone, from the universal access to basic water and sanitation, would result in an 18.5-billion-dollar injection into global economics every year. That is more than the annual GDP of Bosnia & Herzegovina. For every dollar invested into water and sanitation, it returns a 4-dollar economic return from lower health costs, more productivity and fewer premature deaths globally. Thus, ignoring the humanitarian perspective, even economically it would make sense for the world to come together to face a crisis that has already claimed too many lives.

Whilst global water use has increased 7-fold this century, surprisingly this is not due to the global population increase. It is, however, due to how we use our freshwater. Domestic use of water only equates to 8% of the freshwater humans use per year. 70% of the freshwater used each year goes to agriculture and 22% to production. To make a single cup of coffee 130 litres of water is used in production, a single cotton shirt takes 2,500 litres of water to produce and the process of making a kilogram of hamburger meat takes 15,000 litres of water.

As the world becomes increasingly wealthy, it is turning to a more “western lifestyle”, a diet of high-calorie foods, and luxury clothing products. But due to the quantity of water needed to grow the raw materials for these high-calorie foods and the water-intensive production of these clothes, it would be impossible for the whole world to adopt this lifestyle. There would not be enough fresh water on Earth to grow enough alfalfa and cotton. This evidences that the means of production of our products is extremely wasteful and could lead to a global food shortage. The United Nations has reported that these food shortages will likely lead to social unrest, political turmoil, and eventually terrorism.

As water is priced so liberally it means that people, especially in the “developed” world, are extremely wasteful with how we use our water. Whilst about 60 litres of water a day is associated with humans’ rights, the average person in the UK uses around 142 litres of water a day. This is not just a problem in the developed world, countries with agricultural-based economies are also partly to blame for wasteful farming practises. For example, farmers in South Asian have turned to flooding their fields instead of practising proper irrigation methods. This means that the quantity of water that is used to farm is disproportionately more than what needs to be used. Countries around the world farm using methods that do not make sense. For example, farmers in China, India, Pakistan and America plant there most water-intensive crops in their driest regions. This means that a lot more water has to be pumped to these fields then what would have been needed if more suitable crops were planted.

The increase in droughts and global water scarcity has led Goldman Sachs, a leading global financial institution, to predict that water will become the petroleum of the next century. In an attempt to solve global water scarcity there have been talks in the international community of possibly increasing the price of water to re-adjust the supply-demand equilibrium. An increase in the price of water will mean that practises such as growing crops like sugarcane, alfalfa and wheat in dry regions would cease to make commercial or economic sense. However, this would not mean that farmer would lose their livelihoods, they could plant other crops that may be better suited to their climate which could avoid their harvests being destroyed by unfavourable weather conditions. In the face of global water scarcity, this would help reduce wasteful water consumption globally.

Not only would an increase in the price of water change the behaviour of the agricultural community, but it would also change the behaviour of governments. Despite Mexico City being known for water scarcity, 42% of its fresh water is wasted via leaks in infrastructure. By increasing the price of water, it would pressure governments to invest more heavily in the development and improvement of infrastructure across the world. This would make for a better and more efficient water supply, significantly reducing the possibility of a Day Zero scenario in cities across the world.

A possible solution to the water scarcity crisis is desalination. Desalination is the process of cleaning water by taking minerals, mainly salts, from the water to make it fit for human consumption. The level of desalination of water has more than doubled over the last decade, from 15km to 33km. However, this equates to less than 1% of total water usage globally. The cost of desalination is currently too high to be viable around most of the world. There is also the issue of the by-product of the desalination process which leaves an extremely salty concentrate which if put back into an open water source could damage the eco-system.

Another solution is a water tax. This could work one of two ways. The first is that the price of a litre of water could be dependent on the income of the household. The more a family makes, the more they would pay more for each litre of water. This will apply the same water-saving pressure to everyone, and the real inflation of water prices would be felt by everyone at the same level. This would avoid the issue of poorer areas or communicates being unfairly forced to pay a higher proportion of their income for a cost that society as a whole should bear.

The second method to impose a water tax would be to allow around 60 litres of water, per person, to pass through homes at a normal rate, as this is the quantity of water associated with human rights, but the price of every litre of water above the 60 litres would be charged at a higher rate. This once again helps those who are less affluent but ensures that those who use excessive water are deterred from being wasteful.

The final and possibly best method to avoid the impending water crisis can be learnt from Cape Town. Cape Town managed to drop its water consumption from 1.2 billion litres of water in 2014 to 516 million litres in 2018, an incredible effort. Some of the methods used to achieve this included limiting the quantity of water people had access to and the introduction of water rations. Whilst practically this would not be viable on a daily basis, these practises should certainly be used as a guide globally wherever water scarcity is imminent. With a lot of countries in the West predicted to have their own Day Zero within this decade, it is likely that we will first-hand have to experience at least one of the above solutions.

Despite the possibility of a global Day Zero being slim, it is our duty as humans to comes together and help those who do face the challenges of water scarcity. An estimated 3.5 million people die each year from a lack of safe water. To put this into perspective 1.2 million people have died since the Covid-19 pandemic started. The sad reality is that deaths due to a lack of clean accessible water have become so common that there is no real global outcry to make a significant change. But with water scarcity becoming more widespread there is hope that humanity will step up.