Water crises are the biggest risk facing mankind - here's why
Four billion people already face water scarcity at least 1 month of the year.
Things will get a lot worse by 2050. Extreme water scarcity is expected to cover nearly all of the Middle East, large parts of Africa and Asia, and significant parts of the Americas too.
Global freshwater demand is expected to rise around 50% from 2000 to 2050. Most of that will be for manufacturing and energy.
All the while, global warming will aggravate precipitation extremes, with today's dry areas getting even dryer.
Humans are increasingly relying on groundwater, with usage rates tripling over 50 years. Over-use of that supply can cause it to become depleted or contaminated.
Source: WWDR 2012
Case-in-point, California has relied on groundwater for as much as 60% of its supply in drought years—a number that has alarmed environmentalists.
Source: Choy, Hanny and Geoff McGhee (2014), "Understanding California’s Groundwater" from Stanford University
Water is already a luxury in some places. GDP per capita and water consumption are clearly linked in the Middle East.
Source: WWDR 2012
Many countries are dealing with multiple water-related hotspots. Cambodia, for instance, is flood-prone, cyclone-prone, drought-prone, and unusually exposed to climate change, with poor access to drinking water and poor-access to sanitation.
Source: WWDR 2012
Another major problem is water quality, which is projected to deteriorate significantly due to chemical pollutants. The map below shows how much water quality risk will increase by 2050.
Source: WWDR 2016
America’s problems with water quality are tied to infrastructure decline. Without more investment, the country faces more incidents like the recent discovery of lead-poisoning in Michigan.
Control of water resources will be a growing source of tension worldwide. For instance, countries may fight for access to five great river systems in the equatorial region known as the Great World Desert.
Source: Lee, James (2009), "Climate Change and Armed Conflict: Hot and Cold Wars" from Routledge Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution
Take the Nile: "There appears to be an inevitable collision between Egypt’s need for water, as a downstream user, and rising needs upstream to satisfy rowing populations in Sudan and Ethiopia," writes Professor James Lee in "Climate Change and Armed Conflict."
Also worrying: eight of the ten longest rivers in Asia originate in China in some way, with six coming from Tibet. "China’s ability to control these waters and use them internally will be a central geopolitical issue," writes Lee.
Tensions could also rise over cloud seeding to generate rain, even though this technique does not actually steal rain from neighboring areas. "Countries have gone to war over less," Lee said in Esquire.
Source: "Mueller, Max" (2016), "How the UAE is making it rain" in "Esquire Middle East"
Put it all together, and it’s no wonder water is the biggest risk in the next 10 years.
Source: World Economic Forum
Our best hope? Reducing water use in manufacturing, energy, and agriculture is key. So is international cooperation to help people around the world and stop new conflict.
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