Let’s look at the harsh reality that we are facing about the water crisis
The fact is we are facing a water crisis and is only getting worse day by day. We are at a real inflection point where, if we’re not careful we may actually get out ahead of our ability to manage it. And the thing is there is no substitute for water. Each of us will die in just eleven days without it.
Recently, the mayor of Cape Town – A South African city had announced that it could become the first major city in the world to run out of water. Cape Town is inching closer now to Day Zero. It’s just days away from having to shut off most water taps because of the severe drought that they are facing.
And the fact it’s not just Cape Town. São Paulo, Melbourne, Jakarta, London, Beijing, Istanbul, Tokyo, Bangalore, and many more cities will face their own Day Zero in the next few decades unless their water uses radically changes. A study suggests that by 2040 most of the world won’t have enough water to meet demand year-round.
How have we built a world where we don’t have enough of its most valuable resource?
The earth is the blue planet. We have around 326 million trillion gallons of water. But, the fact is 97 percent of that water is salty and 2 percent is trapped in ice at the pole so humankind relies on 1 percent of that water to survive! And of that 1 percent, most is situated underground and really difficult and expensive to get to. We have got a lot better at accessing groundwater. But there’s a catch. Those water deposits have accumulated over millennia and it will take millennia to fill it back up. Thus, we have to face a water crisis at some point but our usage will determine that point.
For many industries, this water is equivalent to liquid gold. They exploit these water resources like these resources are infinite in quantity. If this attitude of ours towards water does not change then, in the next decade or so, we would have to use water rations, or we’d have to line up at city water stations to obtain water for our daily use.