Are we running out of clean water? - Balsher Singh Sidhu
From space, our planet appears
to be more ocean than Earth.
But despite the water covering 71%
of the planet’s surface,
more than half the world’s population
endures extreme water scarcity
for at least one month a year.
And current estimates predict
that by 2040,
up to 20 more countries could be
experiencing water shortages.
Taken together, these bleak statistics
raise a startling question:
are we running out of clean water?
Well yes, and no.
At a planetary scale, Earth can’t run out
of freshwater thanks to the water cycle,
a system that continuously produces
and recycles water,
morphing it from vapour, to liquid,
to ice as it circulates around the globe.
So this isn’t really a question of
how much water there is,
but of how much of it
is accessible to us.
97% of earth’s liquid is saltwater,
too loaded with minerals for humans
to drink or use in agriculture.
Of the remaining 3% of potentially
usable freshwater,
more than two-thirds is frozen
in ice caps and glaciers.
That leaves less than 1% available
for sustaining all life on Earth,
spread across our planet
in rivers, lakes,
underground aquifers, ground ice
and permafrost.
It’s these sources of water that are being
rapidly depleted by humans,
but slowly replenished
by rain and snowfall.
And this limited supply isn’t distributed
evenly around the globe.
Diverse climates and geography
provide some regions
with more rainfall and natural water sources,
while other areas have geographic features
that make transporting water
much more difficult.
And supplying the infrastructure
and energy it would take
to move water across these
regions is extremely expensive.
In many of these water-poor areas, as well
as some with greater access to water,
humanity is guzzling up the local water
supply faster than it can be replenished.
And when more quickly renewed
sources can’t meet the demand,
we start pumping it out of our
finite underground reserves.
Of Earth’s 37 major underground reservoirs,
21 are on track to be irreversibly emptied.
So while it’s true that our planet
isn’t actually losing water,
we are depleting the water sources
we rely on at an unsustainable pace.
This might seem surprising –
after all, on average, people only drink
about two liters of water a day.
But water plays a hidden role in our daily
lives, and in that same 24 hours,
most people will actually consume
an estimated 3000 liters of water.
In fact, household water – which we use
to drink, cook, and clean –
accounts for only 3.6% of humanity’s
water consumption.
Another 4.4% goes to the wide
range of factories
which make the products we buy each day.
But the remaining 92% of our water
consumption is all spent on a single industry:
agriculture.
Our farms drain the equivalent of
3.3 billion
Olympic-sized swimming pools every year,
all of it swallowed up by
crops and livestock
to feed Earth’s growing population.
Agriculture currently covers 37%
of Earth’s land area,
posing the biggest threat to our
regional water supplies.
And yet, it’s also a necessity.
So how do we limit agriculture’s thirst
while still feeding those who rely on it?
Farmers are already finding ingenious
ways to reduce their impact,
like using special irrigation techniques
to grow “more crop per drop”,
and breeding new crops
that are less thirsty.
Other industries are following suit,
adopting production processes
that reuse and recycle water.
On a personal level, reducing food waste
is the first step to reducing water use,
since one-third of the food that leaves
farms is currently wasted or thrown away.
You might also want to consider
eating less water-intensive foods
like shelled nuts and red meat.
Adopting a vegetarian lifestyle
could reduce
up to one third of your water footprint.
Our planet may never run out of water,
but it doesn’t have to for
individuals to go thirsty.
Solving this local problem
requires a global solution,
and small day-to-day decisions can
affect reservoirs around the world.
