A world without water

ROBERT CIANFLONE/Getty Images News Today marks the fifteenth annual World Water Day, first designated by the United Nations in 1992. This year’s theme though, “Coping with Water Scarcity,” is hardly celebratory, and reflects a growing global concern about the steady drip of bad news for water supplies. Water scarcity and its implications for global stability ...

603110_070322_drought_05.jpg
603110_070322_drought_05.jpg

ROBERT CIANFLONE/Getty Images News

ROBERT CIANFLONE/Getty Images News

Today marks the fifteenth annual World Water Day, first designated by the United Nations in 1992. This year’s theme though, “Coping with Water Scarcity,” is hardly celebratory, and reflects a growing global concern about the steady drip of bad news for water supplies.

Water scarcity and its implications for global stability is one of the most critical, yet least discussed, issues of our generation. As Sandra Postel and Aaron Wolf reported in FP way back in 2001, more than fifty countries on five continents are facing severe water crises that could spiral into military conflicts. By the time the article was written, the renewable water supply per person had dropped by almost sixty percent since 1950. And it gets worse:

By 2015, nearly three billion people – 40 percent of the projected world population – are expected to live in countries that find it difficult or impossible to mobilize enough water to satisfy the food, industrial, and domestic needs of their citizens. This scarcity will translate into heightened competition for water between cities and farms, between neighboring states and provinces, and at times between nations.

Unlike with oil, there is no substitute for fresh water. Have a nice day.

Prerna Mankad is a researcher at Foreign Policy.

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