Water scarcity and its effectes
Water scarcity involves water crisis, water shortage, water deficit or water stress. Water scarcity can be due to physical water scarcity and economic water scarcity. Physical water scarcity refers to a situation where natural water resources are unable to meet a region’s demand and economic water scarcity is a result of poor water management resources.
According to Wikipedia, “Water scarcity is the lack of sufficient available water resources to meet the demands of water usage within a region. It already affects every continent and around 2.8 billion people around the world at least one month out of every year. More than 1.2 billion people lack access to clean drinking water.”
Lack of Access to Drinking Water: The biggest problem that happens when you have water scarcity is that people are not able to get fresh, clean drinking water. The human body can only go so long without water, and a lack of drinking water can result in a number of other problems, which we discuss below.
The effects of water scarcity can be grouped into these 4 broad areas— Health, Hunger, Education, and Poverty.
- Health
In many developing countries, people are forced to drink low quality water from flowing streams, many of which are contaminated. There are many water-borne diseases that people die off.
- Less water also means sewage does not flow, and mosquitoes are other insects breed on still (stagnant) dirty water. The result is deadly malaria and other infections.
- Lack of water or quality water causes huge sanitation issues. Clinics, local restaurants, public places of convenience and many other places are forced to use very little water for cleaning. This compromises the health of the staff and people who use the facilities.
- 2. Hunger
It takes a lot of water to grow food and care for animals. Experts say that globally we use 70% of our water sources for agriculture and irrigation and only 10% on domestic uses.
Less water means farming and other crops that need water to grow have lower yield. It means farm animals will die and others will not do well without water. The result is constant hunger and thirst and low quality of life. - 3. Education
It is a bit hard to see how water and education is related. For many people in other parts of the world children (and teen girls) have to be up at dawn to collect water for the family. They have to walk for several miles to get water. The children get tired and some have to miss school as a result. Doing this for many years take away school times and the cycle continues. In other places, girls and women are not allowed to go to school at all so that they can serve the family by getting water and taking care of other family needs. - 4. Poverty
Access to quality water is key to economic prosperity and better living standards. Businesses and schools thrive when people come to work on time and not have to spend all morning looking for water. Restaurants, hotels and shopping places need to keep clean to attract tourists and foreign investments. Manufacturing activities, commercial farms, and mining processes all need a lot of water to thrive. Lack of water means no economic activities will happen and the people will be in constant poverty.
Water scarcity involves water crisis, water shortage, water deficit or water stress. Water scarcity can be due to physical water scarcity and economic water scarcity. Physical water scarcity refers to a situation where natural water resources are unable to meet a region’s demand and economic water scarcity is a result of poor water management resources.
According to Wikipedia, “Water scarcity is the lack of sufficient available water resources to meet the demands of water usage within a region. It already affects every continent and around 2.8 billion people around the world at least one month out of every year. More than 1.2 billion people lack access to clean drinking water.”
Lack of Access to Drinking Water: The biggest problem that happens when you have water scarcity is that people are not able to get fresh, clean drinking water. The human body can only go so long without water, and a lack of drinking water can result in a number of other problems, which we discuss below.
The effects of water scarcity can be grouped into these 4 broad areas— Health, Hunger, Education, and Poverty.
- Health
In many developing countries, people are forced to drink low quality water from flowing streams, many of which are contaminated. There are many water-borne diseases that people die off.
- Less water also means sewage does not flow, and mosquitoes are other insects breed on still (stagnant) dirty water. The result is deadly malaria and other infections.
- Lack of water or quality water causes huge sanitation issues. Clinics, local restaurants, public places of convenience and many other places are forced to use very little water for cleaning. This compromises the health of the staff and people who use the facilities.
- 2. Hunger
It takes a lot of water to grow food and care for animals. Experts say that globally we use 70% of our water sources for agriculture and irrigation and only 10% on domestic uses.
Less water means farming and other crops that need water to grow have lower yield. It means farm animals will die and others will not do well without water. The result is constant hunger and thirst and low quality of life. - 3. Education
It is a bit hard to see how water and education is related. For many people in other parts of the world children (and teen girls) have to be up at dawn to collect water for the family. They have to walk for several miles to get water. The children get tired and some have to miss school as a result. Doing this for many years take away school times and the cycle continues. In other places, girls and women are not allowed to go to school at all so that they can serve the family by getting water and taking care of other family needs. - 4. Poverty
Access to quality water is key to economic prosperity and better living standards. Businesses and schools thrive when people come to work on time and not have to spend all morning looking for water. Restaurants, hotels and shopping places need to keep clean to attract tourists and foreign investments. Manufacturing activities, commercial farms, and mining processes all need a lot of water to thrive. Lack of water means no economic activities will happen and the people will be in constant poverty.
