WaterScarcity

Water Scarcity and its Quality in 3rd Countries

World Bank vice president Ismail Serageldin predicted, "Many of the wars of the 20th century were about oil, but wars of the 21st century will be over water." Four terms have been developed for the purposes of greater clarity: water shortage, water scarcity, and water stress and water security.

Firstly, water shortage is used to describe an absolute shortage where levels of available water do not meet certain defined minimum requirements. Second, water scarcity is a more relative concept describing the relationship between demand for water and its availability. Next, water stress is the symptomatic consequence of scarcity which may manifest itself as increasing conflict over sectoral usage, a decline in service levels, crop failure, food insecurity etc.. This term is analogous to the common use of the term "drought". Last, water security is a situation of reliable and secure //access// to water over time.

Water politics are also called the hydro politics that is affected by the availability of water and its resources that is a necessity for all life forms and human development. The availability of drinking water is inadequate and shrinking worldwide and the causes are related to both quantity and quality; including local society, limited availability and population pressure, but also human activities of mass consumption, misuse, environmental degradation and water pollution, as well as climate change. With decreasing availability and increasing demand for water, some predicted that clean water will become the "next oil"; making countries with this resource in abundance the water-rich countries in the world. According to the UK charity WaterAid in 2004, a child dies every 15 seconds from easily preventable water-related diseases; often this means lack of sewage disposal. Fresh water-now more precious than ever in our history for its usages in agriculture, high-tech manufacturing, and energy production-now needs our help for our future for all living creatures need water in their life.

Water scarcity is the issue of poverty that unclean water and lack of sanitation are poor people's destiny all around the world. The imbalance between availability and demand, the decreases of groundwater and surface water quality is the major role that makes up the water scarcity. Since scarcity often has water shortages that are by caused droughts and wide climate variability including the population growth and economic development. There are degrees of scarcity: absolute, life-threatening, seasonal, temporary, cyclical, etc. Populations with normally high levels of consumption may experience temporary scarcity more keenly than other societies accustomed to using much less water. Water scarcity will not be only affecting some little problems that we'll be able to face but it will give us a great challenge to face in order to save what we have and to learn how to use what we have in a more proper way. Especially when water scarcity is going to be needing a lot of work in order to figure out and to be solved both economically and internationally with helps provided from the countries all around the world, there are some countries who can't because of their poorly developed economic systems or because of their political situation that they are facing.

These days, people living in a developed country barely give thought to the availability of water for the needs. Most people often don't realize that even in industrialized countries such as United States or Canada was not available with running water in homes for many rural areas few decades ago. At the same time, situation in developing countries are very different because the majority people do not have the access to clean water. With the global perspective, availability of water to communities fall within two extremes. One is the highly urbanized city of advanced industrialized countries, which all people have house water connections and sewerage services with the excellent quality of water. At the other extreme is that within the developing countries like the 3rd world countries, are provided with low quality of water and not all people are free to access to the clean water.


 * Background Information**

With the followed topic, water scarcity and its quality I had been using many sites to understand and know more about it.


 * [|FAO] || In the last century, water usage has grown more than twice the population rate that is affecting increasing number of regions. Followed by the FAO site, it says that by 2025, 1,800 million people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the actual world population could be under stress conditions. ||
 * [|3rd world countries] || The 3rd world countries in the world are suffering from low-income criterion, human resource weakness criterion, and economic vulnerability criterion. Because of this water scarcity, it is going to be the rural areas affected the most where poor people earn their living by some small farms. It is very important to those kinds of countries who mainly live their lives with agricultural products, which they need, water to work. ||
 * [|Water Scarcity Articles] || According to this site, many countries have brought up the fact that water scarcity is becoming a bigger problem that is beginning to notify people with the seriousness of this actual issue. Also, it includes some of the articles that talk about the water quality in many countries. In addition, if this continues to happen, it is very likely to become a great challenge not only to the 3rd world countries but also to the powerful countries in any way when they are too, living at the same place as anybody else who will have to be facing challenges if needed. ||
 * [|SSB] || According to the press release of the Worldwatch Institute (September 23, 1999) "As world population approaches 6 billion on October 12, water tables are falling on every continent, major rivers are drained dry before they reach the sea and millions of people lack enough water to satisfy basic needs." In India the situation is very serious due to its vast arid areas and increasing population. Scarcity of water is a part of a global environmental crisis and is of utmost importance for the humanity survival. Population growth followed by increased water consumption, over exploitation of the ground water, disputes and irregularities in sharing water of the rivers going through neighboring states, urbanization and industrialization, and increasing water pollutions are few critical main reasons of water scarcity and its quality. The 3rd countries will need help for they won’t be able to challenge all these by themselves but with help of other countries. ||
 * Summary of the Issue**

Water scarcity is not something that can be treated easily since it will be giving so much bad affects to the humans but also for the environment in a critical way. If it was to be more worse than what we have now in the world these days, humans on Earth will suffer by food shortages, health crisis, and international conflict when the environment is going to be suffering from erosion, waste disposal problems, and polluted waters. There actually were some solutions for water scarcity in the past but it is crucial to have a more reactive way of solving the problem in order to save us and to save the Earth.

Africa, Middle East, South Asia, and the North American are some regions with water scarcity. More specifically, North and East Africa, India, China, Mexico, Middle East, southern region of the former Soviet states and the western part of the United States of America are included among the most directly affected regions. Water scarcity is a crucial and great challenge to the countries that wouldn't be able to afford the work or the payments in order to solve this challenge when they are going to be provided with complicated and harder way of living.

On Earth, there is 1,360 million cubic kilometers of water but only .126 million cubic kilometers are easily available that means there are about 0.009% of water from the whole world is available for us. The global usages of water per year are 225 cubic kilometers for cooling, 200 for industrial, 100 for domestic, and 40 for livestock that totally adds up to 565 cubic kilometers per year. Some examples of how the water scarcity got worse are: · Population growth · Food production · Climatic change and variability · Land use · Water quality · Water demand · <span style="font-family: 'Tw Cen MT','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">Sectoral resources and institutional capacity · <span style="font-family: 'Tw Cen MT','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">Poverty and economic policy · <span style="font-family: 'Tw Cen MT','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">Legislation and water resource management · <span style="font-family: 'Tw Cen MT','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">International waters · <span style="font-family: 'Tw Cen MT','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">Sectoral professional capacity · <span style="font-family: 'Tw Cen MT','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">Political realities · <span style="font-family: 'Tw Cen MT','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">Sociological issues

<span style="font-family: 'Tw Cen MT','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">People for many purposes such as, irrigation, navigation, hydroelectric power generation, industrial manufacturing, waste disposal, recreation, and wildlife enhancement have used water itself.


 * Collected Journal Entries**

March 26th, 2010

I have been reading about this FAO [|article] that talks broadly about water scarcity but that gives lots of information about it. Being aware of the future's challenges and being prepared from it has most of the time given not bad effects but rather good causes. Thinking about the year 2025 when nearly 2,000 million people will be suffering from water scarcity has reminded me with the thought that people I knew in the past, people I know now, and people I will know later on may be one of these people maybe regretting about how some of them once were using the water in a bad way. Furthermore, the water scarcity didn't only affect humans with droughts and environmental situations, but for example lacking peoples' safe access to sustain their lives and secure their livestock. Water scarcity is going to attack the poor people first but then it won't stop, but to continue going on until the people stop it before it gives more disasters to the others who haven't yet been affected.

March 30th, 2010

In order to know about the current [|3rd world countries] ; I was searching of their list and what they were suffering from. The 3rd world countries that were not very developed have been suffering from low-income criterion, human resource weakness criterion, and economic vulnerability criterion according to the site. Most of the countries who suffer with the fact with poverty tend to be working more on the agricultural products and less on industrial products. This agricultural products that the people depend on has water to play an enormous role with them but when the water scarcity attacks them with the role, they will be lacking with the amount of water needed that decreases and the quality of the water falling, not fully giving what their livestock actually needs which will lead them to poor qualified agricultural products. Then, as the poor qualified agricultural products are being sold, it is very likely that they will be getting less and less money depending on the quality of the products that they have.

May 23rd, 2010

The articles that I have read recently has not been showed, but it did give a lot of information in order to understand the water situations these days. For water politics is the big name including both problem of water scarcity and its quality all around the whole world, it is not more essential looking than it was before, as it has been understood. As the 3rd countries in the world is facing many problems such as politics, environmental, and economic it is very important to help the countries in those kind of situation to lift up and let them help themselves from this world-wide serious problem. Even the World Bank's vice president has told that the war in 21st century will be different from the oil war in the 20th century but that it will be over water, which it still seems as not a serious problem when it actually is. Therefore, this big issue world-wide should firstly be focused on the 3rd countries for their situations will be worse than the other developed countries and then solve it all together with help of each single countries and face the challenge.

June 28th, 2010 To dig in further into my topic, I have researched some more using sites from [|FAO], [|SSB], and others. By now, I know the causes of water scarcity and more about the topic, water, how it divides into four sections to be easily understood. There are water shortage, scarcity, stress, and security. Population growths, food productions, climate changes, land uses, and so many others have caused so much of water problems leading to droughts, bad qualities, and more. I really think that the water problem should be solved as soon as possible for it will not only effect few regions on Earth, but the whole planet together including the other living creatures.

[] []