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Water Shortage Facts

In the West, we take water for granted. Most people don’t actually think about the supply of water. Water is easy to ignore provided you can still turn on a tap and water comes out!

We still have the same amount of water in our ecosystem but the supply of freshwater faces a three-pronged attack from population growth, climate change and industrialisation. As it currently stands, there’s not enough water to go around.

 

Of the worlds total water suplly 97% is seawater and of the remaining less than 0.5% is usable unpollutted clean water.

Water supply facts

  • 97.5% of the earth's water is saltwater.
  • The water we drink has been circling around in the water cycle for millions of years – that means the same water exists now as when the dinosaurs were on the Earth!
  • The amount of fresh water supply provided by the hydrological cycle does not increase. Water everywhere on the planet is an integral part of the hydrologic cycle.
  • Many major rivers are running dry – Colorado, Ganges, Indus, Rio Grande and Yellow – are so over-tapped that they now run dry for part of the year.
  • Freshwater wetland has shrunk by about half worldwide.
  • In 1972, the Yellow River in China failed to reach the sea for the first time in history. That year it failed on 15 days; every year since, it has run dry for a longer period of time, until in 1997, it failed to reach the sea for 226 days.
  • The UK has less available water per person than most other European countries.
  • London is drier than Istanbul, and the South East of England has less water available per person than the Sudan and Syria.
  • Water is scarce in parts of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as well as in England - large scale drought is already occurring in the UK, with the lowest rainfall, groundwater and reservoir levels for decades.
  • A country is said to experience "water stress" when annual water supplies drop below 1,700 cubic meters per person. At levels between 1,700 and 1,000 cubic meters per person, periodic or limited water shortages can be expected. When annual water supplies drop below 1,000 cubic meters per person, the country faces water scarcity.

 

water is priced and used not as a scarce environmental resource, but as an infinitely available commodity

Water usage facts

  • The average amount of water needed to produce one kilogramme of potatoes is 1000 litres, wheat is 1450 litres and rice is 3450 litres. (Gleick 2001)
  • The average European uses 200 litres of water every day. North Americans use 400 litres.
  • It takes 2,400 litres to produce a hamburger and 11,000 litres to make a pair of jeans, including the water needed to grow the cotton.
  • The average person in the developing world uses 10 litres of water every day for their drinking, washing and cooking. (Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC))
  • An old lavatory uses at least nine litres of water a flush; a low-flush model uses as little as three litres. Each household in the UK uses about 50 litres a person a day for flushing – 35% of domestic water use. (Environment Agency)
  • A normal individual uses from 135-140 litres of water daily.
  • Filling a kettle consumes 2.5 litres of water, a bath takes 80 litres of water to be filled and by washing their clothes everyday an individual takes 65 litres of water to fill a washing machine up.
  • Traditional baths use both more water and more energy than a shower does.
  • Many businesses are literally pouring money down the drain by unnecessarily wasting water. If every business in the region leaves just one tap dripping for a day, a staggering 1.6 million litres of water would be wasted over the course of a year.
  • To give you an idea: much of the company's waste water is now recycled in an automatic cleaning system and constitutes half of the cleaning water needed, while a moving beam cask washer reduced the amount of water required for cask cleaning by recycling the final rinse water.
  • Each person in the UK currently uses about 150 litres of water every day. This has been rising by 1% a year since 1930. This consumption level is not sustainable in the long-term.
  • Agriculture accounts for over 70% of the world's water consumption. (UN Environment Programme (UNEP))
  • It takes at least 2,000 litres to produce enough food for one person for one day.
  • Global water use is divided as follow: 70% Agriculture, 22% Industry, 8% Domestic.

 

An extra US10 billion each year is neede to reach the target of halving the proportion of people without access to safe water and sanitation

The future of water

  • On current trends over the next 20 years humans will use 40% more water than they do now.
  • An extra US$10 billion each year is needed to reach the target of halving the proportion of people without access to safe water and sanitation
  • To reach the water target will require the provision of services to an additional 300,000 people a day over the next decade, requiring current efforts to be stepped up by almost one third.
  • To reach the sanitation target means providing services to an additional 450,000 people a day until 2015. This calls for almost a doubling of the current efforts.