Worldwide, some 700 million people don’t have access to enough clean water. In 10 years the number is expected to explode to 1.8 billion. In many places, squeezing fresh water from the ocean might be the only viable way to increase the supply.
Every day, 2 million tons of human wastes are disposed of in watercourses, and in developing countries 70 % of industrial wastes are dumped untreated into waters where they pollute the usable water supply. But not only industry contaminates our water resources, so does also agriculture. The contribution of the food sector to the production of organic water pollutants, are in high-income countries 40 % and in low-income countries 54 %.
Today, one in two people on the planet live in a city. The world’s cities are growing at an exceptional rate and urbanisation is a continuum. 93% of the urbanization occurs in poor or developing countries, and nearly 40% of the world’s urban expansion is growing slums.
Today 2.5 billion people, including almost one billion children, live without even basic sanitation. Every 20 seconds, a child dies as a result of poor sanitation. That’s 1.5 million preventable deaths each year.
By 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could live under water stress conditions.
During the period 2000 to 2006, a total of 2,163 water-related disasters were reported globally in the Emergency Disasters Database, killing more than 290,000 people, affecting more than 1.5 billion, and inflicting more than US$422 billion of damage.
There is evidence that the global climate is changing, and water is the primary medium through which climate change impacts the earth’s ecosystem and people.
There are 276 transboundary river basins in the world (64 transboundary river basins in Africa, 60 in Asia, 68 in Europe, 46 in North America and 38 in South America) and 200 transboundary aquifers have also been identified.
70% of the global water withdrawals go to agriculture. The world population is expected to rise from 7 billion people today to 9 billion in 2050, leading to a 60% increase of the food needed globally and a 19% increase of agricultural water consumption.
Water scarcity has detrimental impacts on women and girls. Indeed, water is central to the full range of domestic ‘unpaid’ activities, which many cultures still view traditionally as “women domain”: food preparation, care of animals, crop irrigation, personal hygiene of the entire household, care of the sick, cleaning, washing and waste disposal. This gendered division of labour in water collection tasks deprives women and girls from opportunities to escape the vicious circle of poverty and disempowerment. We need to view women and men as equal partners in all areas of water governance and water resource management at all levels.
To coincide with the 2013 International Year of Water Cooperation, the International Day for Biological Diversity on 22 May this year will address “Water and Biodiversity”. This new fact sheet looks both at the role of water to sustain biodiversity and at the role of biodiversity for the provision of freshwater.
Source: www.unwater.org
