Crisis

~Water~
It is our right to use, duty to conserve and crime to exploit.
In 1995, the vice-president of the World Bank, Ismail Serageldin predicted an acute water shortage for the new millennium: "If the wars of this century were fought for oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water."
Water is the essence of life. It is perhaps the most basic resource: it is essential for oursurvival, crucial for relieving poverty, hunger, disease and critical for economic use. Water is also essential for growing food, as well as for a variety of social and cultural reasons. Water is a basic human right, but unfortunately its use is confined to a few and these few are fast depleting this resource.
Where is all this water?
'All water flows into the oceans or the purse of the rich.'71% of the Earth's surface is water. Of this, 97% is in the oceans and only the remaining 3% is available in rivers, lakes and reservoirs as fresh water. There are three sources of water: rain water, ground water and surface water. Today, all these three resources have been almost depleted. The earth is a closed system and neither gains nor loses much water. This means that the same amount ofwater that existed on earth a million years ago is still here. Water continuously changes from one state to another and moves from place to place forming the hydrological cycle. The water cycle is the process by which water circulates from the land or the oceans to the atmosphere and back again. What is affected is the availability of usable water where and when needed.
Since water plays a veryvital role in sustaining life on Earth, water must be accessible and safe. Lack of safe water is a cause of serious illnesses. Tuberculosis, cholera, diarrhea, typhoid and malaria are the main water borne diseases, which kill over two million people every year, the vast majority being children mostly in developing countries. The world's total population is six billion. One in six people in the worlddo not have access to safe drinking water.

What is the problem?
During the past century, the World population has tripled, and water use has increased six-fold. These changes have come at great environmental cost: half the wetlands have disappeared during the twentieth century; some rivers don't reach the sea and twenty percent of the freshwater fish are endangered.
These environmentalconsequences also entail social and economic costs. While agriculture uses more and more water every year, to meet the food demands of a growing population, other users are competing for the same water: more people means more energy required and more hydropower. Especially in the western world, industrialization has had serious and often negative effects n water quality; currently global markets movethe most polluting industries to the developing countries, usually near cities where population growth and illegal settlements already put a lot of pressure on water resources.
In 2020, 60% of the World's population will be urban, a concentration that makes urban water infrastructure development an extremely urgent issue. These are but one of the factors influencing the world's water resources,complicated by the fact that they are interlinked, and can't be approached separately.
The projections are grim: around the world over the next twenty years, the average supply of water per person is expected to drop by a third and it already is in short supply. The United States projects that by the middle of the next century, at least two billion people in sixty countries- depending onfactors such as population growth and climate change – will be seriously short of water. In the meantime, the water quality will worsen due to pollution and rising temperatures.
Growing populations, wastage of water, inefficient irrigation and pollution exert pressure on this resource. Pollution and wastage are the primary threats to this resource, both of which we as human beings are responsible...