Importance Of Water

Where would people be without water? Well aside from, you know, not being alive, we may never have evolved the big brains that make us such a unique species. Some say that that learning how to keep, and transport water over land was the key to our survival when other similar species just kept dying off. the importance of water in shaping the Earth At some point or another it is likely that where you are sitting right now was covered in water.It may have been under the vast oceans that once spread further than they do today, or they may have been buried under as much as a mile of glacier. Glaciers formed the largest lakes; the Great Lakes and they are responsible for carving mountains into the shapes we know. How about the importance of water in weather Water is also a large part of weather patterns. Aside from actually being part of the weather in the form of rain sleet and snow, large bodies of water can keep a regions temperature milder than a location even a few miles inland. Humidity bring atmospheric pressure and temperature changes. Importance of water for Life The importance of water cant be overstated when it comes to life on Earth. Over 70% of the Earth is covered in water, and without water there simply is no life. There are many life forms that can live with very little water, but nothing living on Earth exists without water. A fluid is needed for the transportation of the nutrients that are required by all living things. All life on Earth uses water as this fluid medium. This makes sense since it is so abundant on our planet and it remains liquid in a wide variety of climates and temperatures. Possibly greater than the importance of water itself, is the importance of clean water. Most living things require a certain type of water to live. For example, fish in the ocean need salt water. Moreover, different fish live at different depths because theyve adapted to a particular level of salt in the water combined with the temperature at that level. If that water isnt clean, that balance changes and those life forms have a more difficult time surviving. Humans require very clean water to live. We must have water that is free of chemicals and diseases. Various other life forms can live on different levels of cleanliness in their water, but wild changes in the type of water ingested can severely affect any living thing. Increasing the contaminates and chemicals in water sources can throw entire ecologies out of whack, killing the life within in them. This illustrates the importance of

water to life and it shows why clean water is so important; its our job as humans to do what we can to keep these contaminates out of the water Importance of Water In Agriculture.
The most important use of water in agriculture is for irrigation, which is a key component to produce enough food. Irrigation takes up to 90% of water withdrawn in some developing countries and significant proportions in more economically developed countries (United States, 30% of freshwater usage is for irrigation).
[41]

It takes around 3,000 litres of water, converted from liquid to vapour, to produce enough

food to satisfy one person's daily dietary need.

industrial applications
Water is used in generation of power. Hydroelectricity is electricity obtained from water. Hydroelectric power comes from water driving a water turbine connected to a generator. Hydroelectricity is a low-cost, non-polluting, renewable energy source. The energy is supplied by the motion of water. Pressurized water is used in water blasting and water jet cutters. Also, very high pressure water guns are used for precise cutting. It works very well, is relatively safe, and is not harmful to the environment. It is also used in the cooling of machinery to prevent over-heating, or prevent saw blades from over-heating. Water is also used in many industrial processes and machines, such as the steam turbine and heat exchanger, in addition to its use as a chemical solvent. Industry requires pure water for many applications and utilizes a variety of purification techniques both in water supply and discharge.

Food Processing Boiling, steaming, and simmering are popular cooking methods that often require immersing food in water or its gaseous state, steam. Water is also used for dishwashing. In Religion Water is considered a purifier in most religions. Major faiths that incorporate ritual washing (ablution) include Christianity, Islam,Hinduism, , Taoism, Immersion of a person in water is a central sacrament of Christianity (where it is called baptism.In addition, a ritual bath in pure water is performed for the dead in many religions including Judaism and Islam. In Islam, the five daily prayers can be done in most cases (see Tayammum) after completing washing certain parts of the body using clean water (wudu).Water is mentioned numerous times in the Bible, for example: "The earth was formed out of water and by water" (NIV). In the Qur'an it is stated that "Living things are made of water" and it is often used to describe paradise.

For recreation purposes Humans use water for many recreational purposes, as well as for exercising and for sports. Some of these include swimming, waterskiing, boating, surfing and diving. In addition, some sports, like ice hockey and ice skating, are played on ice. Lakesides, beaches and waterparks are popular places for people to go to relax and enjoy recreation. Many find the sound and appearance of flowing water to be calming, and fountains and other water features are popular decorations. Some keep fish and other life in aquariums orponds for show, fun, and companionship. Humans also use water for snow sports i.e.skiing, sledding, snowmobiling or snowboarding, which requires the water to be frozen.

The total volume of water on Earth is about 1.4 billion km3. The volume of freshwater resources is around 35 million km3, or about 2.5 percent of the total volume. Source: United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Of these freshwater resources, about 24 million km3 or 70 percent is in the form of ice and permanent snow cover in mountainous regions, the Antarctic and Arctic regions. Source: UNEP Around 30 percent of the world's freshwater is stored underground in the form of groundwater (shallow and deep groundwater basins up to 2 000 metres, soil moisture, swamp water and permafrost). This constitutes about 97 percent of all the freshwater that is potentially available for human use. Source: UNEP Freshwater lakes and rivers contain an estimated 105 000 km3 or around 0.3 percent of the world's freshwater. Source: UNEP The Earth's atmosphere contains approximately 13,000 km3 of water. Source: World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) The total usable freshwater supply for ecosystems and humans is about 200 000 km3 of water - less than 1 percent of all freshwater resources. Source: UNEP

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=w2TCcgkO0NE

How the world uses freshwater: about 70 percent for irrigation about 22 percent for industry about 8 percent for domestic use Source: World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) Water use has been growing at more than the rate twice of population increase in the last century. Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and UN-Water The world's six billion people are appropriating 54 percent of all the accessible freshwater contained in rivers, lakes and underground aquifers. Source: WWAP 145 nations have territory within a transboundary basin. Source: WWAP Water withdrawals are predicted to increase by 50 percent by 2025 in developing countries, and 18 per cent in developed countries. Source: Global Environment Outlook: environment for development (GEO-4) Over 1.4 billion people currently live in river basins where the use of water exceeds minimum recharge levels, leading to the desiccation of rivers and depletion of groundwater. Source: Human Development Report 2006 In 60 percent of European cities with more than 100,000 people, groundwater is being used at a faster rate than it can be replenished. Source: World Business Counicl For Sustainable Development (WBCSD) By 2025, 1 800 million people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could be under stress conditions.

Source: FAO

The UN suggests that each person needs 20-50 litres of safe freshwater a day to ensure their basic needs for drinking, cooking and cleaning. Source: World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) More than one in six people worldwide - 894 million - don't have access to this amount of safe freshwater. Source: World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) Joint Monitoring Programme on Water Supply and Sanitation (JMP) Globally, diarrhoea is the leading cause of illness and death, and 88 per cent of diarrhoeal deaths are due to a lack of access to sanitation facilities, together with inadequate availability of water for hygiene and unsafe drinking water. Source: JMP Today 2.5 billion people, including almost one billion children, live without even basic sanitation. Every 20 seconds, a child dies as a result of poor sanitation. That's 1.5 million preventable deaths each year. Source: Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) In Sub-Saharan Africa, treating diarrhoea consumes 12 percent of the health

budget. On a typical day, more than half the hospital beds in are occupied by patients suffering from faecal-related disease.

Source: WSSCC The daily drinking water requirement per person is 2-4 litres, but it takes 2 000 to 5 000 litres of water to produce one person's daily food. Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) It takes 1 000-3 000 litres of water to produce just one kilo of rice and 13 000 to 15 000 litres to produce one kilo of grain-fed beef. Source: FAO In 2007, the estimated number of undernourished people worldwide was 923 million. Source: FAO Over the period to 2050 the world's water will have to support the agricultural systems that will feed and create livelihoods for an additional 2.7 billion people. Source: FAO The extent of land under irrigation in the world is 277 million hectares, about 20 percent of all cropland. Rainfed agriculture is practiced on the reamining 80 percent of the arable land. Source: FAO The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts yields from rain-dependent agriculture could be down by 50 percent by 2020. Due to climate change, Himalayan snow and ice, which provide vast amounts of water for agriculture in Asia, are expected to decline by 20 percent by 2030. Source: FAO Irrigation increases yields of most crops by 100 to 400 percent, and irrigated agriculture currently contributes to 40 percent of the world's food production. Source: FAO Poor drainage and irrigation practices have led to waterlogging and salinization of approximately 10 percent of the world's irrigated lands. he daily drinking water requirement per person is 2-4 litres, but it takes 2 000 to 5 000 litres of water to produce one person's daily food. Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) It takes 1 000-3 000 litres of water to produce just one kilo of rice and 13 000 to 15 000 litres to produce one kilo of grain-fed beef. Source: FAO In 2007, the estimated number of undernourished people worldwide was 923 million. Source: FAO Over the period to 2050 the world's water will have to support the agricultural systems that will feed and create livelihoods for an additional 2.7 billion people. Source: FAO

The extent of land under irrigation in the world is 277 million hectares, about 20 percent of all cropland. Rainfed agriculture is practiced on the reamining 80 percent of the arable land. Source: FAO The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts yields from rain-dependent agriculture could be down by 50 percent by 2020. Due to climate change, Himalayan snow and ice, which provide vast amounts of water for agriculture in Asia, are expected to decline by 20 percent by 2030. Source: FAO Irrigation increases yields of most crops by 100 to 400 percent, and irrigated agriculture currently contributes to 40 percent of the world's food production. Source: FAO Poor drainage and irrigation practices have led to waterlogging and salinization of approximately 10 percent of the world's irrigated lands. Source: World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP)

Water Crisis
While the world's population tripled in the 20th century, the use of renewable water resources has grown six-fold. Within the next fifty years, the world population will increase by another 40 to 50 %. This population growth - coupled with industrialization and urbanization - will result in an increasing demand for water and will have serious consequences on the environment.

People lack drinking water and sanitation

Photo by ADMVB bokidiawe@yahoogroupes.fr

Already there is more waste water generated and dispersed today than at any other time in the history of our planet: more than one out of six people lack access to safe drinking water, namely 1.1 billion people, and more than two out of six lack adequate sanitation, namely 2.6 billion people (Estimation for 2002, by theWHO/UNICEF JMP, 2004). 3900 children die

every day from water borne diseases (WHO 2004). One must know that these figures represent only people with very poor conditions. In reality, these figures should be much higher.

Water resources are becoming scarce

Agricultural crisis Although food security has been significantly increased in the past thirty years, water withdrawals for irrigation represent 66 % of the total withdrawals and up to 90 % in arid regions, the other 34 % being used by domestic households (10 %), industry (20 %), or evaporated from reservoirs (4 %). (Source: Shiklomanov, 1999) As the per capita use increases due to changes in lifestyle and as population increases as well, the proportion of water for human use is increasing. This, coupled with spatial and temporal variations in water availability, means that the water to produce food for human consumption, industrial processes and all the other uses is becoming scarce. Environmental crisis It is all the more critical that increased water use by humans does not only reduce the amount of water available for industrial and agricultural development but has a profound effect on aquatic ecosystems and their dependent species. Environmental balances are disturbed and cannot play their regulating role anymore. (See Water and Nature)

The concept of Water Stress

Source: WaterGAP 2.0 - December 1999 Water stress results from an imbalance between water use and water resources. The water stress indicator in this map measures the proportion of water withdrawal with respect to total renewable resources. It is a criticality ratio, which implies that water stress depends on the variability of resources. Water stress causes deterioration of fresh water resources in terms of quantity (aquifer over-exploitation, dry rivers, etc.) and quality (eutrophication, organic matter pollution, saline intrusion, etc.) The value of this criticality ratio that indicates high water stress is based on expert judgment and experience (Alcamo and others, 1999). It ranges between 20 % for basins with highly variable runoff and 60 % for temperate zone basins. In this map, we take an overall value of 40 % to indicate high water stress. We see that the situation is heterogeneous over the world.

An increase in tensions As the resource is becoming scarce, tensions among different users may intensify, both at the national and international level. Over 260 river basins are shared by two or more countries. In the absence of strong institutions and agreements, changes within a basin can lead to transboundary tensions. When major projects proceed without regional collaboration, they can become a point of conflicts, heightening regional instability. The Parana La Plata, the Aral Sea, the Jordan and the Danube may serve as examples. Due to the pressure on the Aral Sea, half of its superficy has disappeared, representing 2/3 of its volume. 36 000 km2 of marin grounds are now recovered by salt.

Facts and Figures 1.1 billion people live without clean drinking water 2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation(2002, UNICEF/WHO JMP 2004) 1.8 million people die every year from diarrhoeal diseases. 3 900 children die every day from water bornediseases (WHO 2004) Daily per capita use of water in residential areas: - 350 litres in North America and Japan - 200 litres in Europe - 10-20 litres in sub-Saharan Africa Over 260 river basins are shared by two or more countries mostly without adequate legal or institutional arrangements.

Water scarcity 'now bigger threat than financial crisis' By 2030, more than half the world's population will live in high-risk areas By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor

Humanity is facing "water bankruptcy" as a result of a crisis even greater than the financial meltdown now destabilising the global economy, two authoritative new reports show. They add that it is already beginning to take effect, and there will be no way of bailing the earth out of water scarcity. The two reports one by the world's foremost international economic forum and the other by 24 United Nations agencies presage the opening tomorrow of the most important conference on the looming crisis for three years. The World Water Forum, which will be attended by 20,000 people in Istanbul, will hear stark warnings of how half the world's population will be affected by water shortages in just 20 years' time, with millions dying and increasing conflicts over dwindling resources. A report by the World Economic Forum, which runs the annual Davos meetings of the international business and financial elite, says that lack of water, will "soon tear into various parts of the global economic system" and "start to emerge as a headline geopolitical issue". It adds: "The financial crisis gives us a stark warning of what can happen if known economic risks are left to fester. We are living in a water 'bubble' as unsustainable and fragile as that which precipitated the collapse in world financial markets. We are now on the verge of bankruptcy in many places with no way of paying the debt back." The Earth a blue-green oasis in the limitless black desert of space has a finite stock of water. There is precisely the same amount of it on the planet as there was in the age of the dinosaurs, and the world's population of more than 6.7 billion people has to share the same quantity as the 300 million global inhabitants of Roman times. Water use has been growing far faster than the number of people. During the 20th century the world population increased fourfold, but the amount of freshwater that it used increased nine times over. Already 2.8 billion people live in areas of high water stress, the report calculates, and this will rise to 3.9 billion more than half the expected

population of the world by 2030. By that time, water scarcity could cut world harvests by 30 per cent equivalent to all the grain grown in the US and India even as human numbers and appetites increase. Some 60 per cent of China's 669 cities are already short of water. The huge Yellow River is now left with only 10 per cent of its natural flow, sometimes failing to reach the sea altogether. And the glaciers of the Himalayas, which act as gigantic water banks supplying two billion people in Asia, are melting ever faster as global warming accelerates. Meanwhile devastating droughts are crippling Australia and Texas. The World Water Development Report, compiled by 24 UN agencies under the auspices of Unesco, adds that shortages are already beginning to constrain economic growth in areas as diverse and California, China, Australia, India and Indonesia. The report, which will be published tomorrow, also expects water conflicts to break out in the Middle East, Haiti, Sri Lanka, Colombia and other countries. "Conflicts about water can occur at all scales," it warns. "Hydrological shocks" brought about by climate change are likely to "increase the risk of major national and international security threats".

Fact File

Fact 1
Water scarcity occurs even in areas where there is plenty of rainfall or freshwater. How water is conserved, used and distributed in communities, and the quality of the water available can determine if there is enough to meet the demands of households, farms, industry and the environment.

fact 2
Water scarcity affects one in three people on every continent of the globe. The situation is getting worse as needs for water rise along with population growth, urbanization and increases in household and industrial uses.

fact 3
Almost one fifth of the world's population (about 1.2 billion people) live in areas where the water is physically scarce. One quarter of the global population also live in developing countries that face water shortages due to a lack of infrastructure to fetch water from rivers and aquifers.

Fact 4
A lack of water has driven up the use of wastewater for agricultural production in poor urban and rural communities. More than 10% of people worldwide consume foods irrigated by wastewater that can contain chemicals or disease-causing organisms.

http://www.bluestarpr.com/the-ripple-effect.html?gclid=CLjAsu-C4asCFYMa6wodfSRUOQ

Water Scarcity

Under pressure from rising populations, more extravagant lifestyles, intensive agriculture and industrialisation, water has become a scarce resource. Inevitably, it is the poor who tend to lose out in competition for resources, typically through the pricing mechanism. The World Bank estimates that demand for water will exceed supply by 40% by 2030. UN Water suggests that 1.8 billion people live in regions already classified as water scarce. Two thirds of the global population could experience water stress by 2025. Those who applaud the world's achievement of expanding food production exponentially over the last generation tend to forget the parallel demands placed on water resources. Many countries extract freshwater faster than its natural rate of replenishment, causing groundwater tables to fall dramatically. The productivity of a quarter of the worlds rice-growing regions may be Morocco Curt at risk by 2025. A new industry in efficient irrigation devices is booming Carnemark/World Bank as the combined imperatives of food and water security become ever / Flickr more apparent.

Precious water resource,

Even if the international donor community delivers all the funding requested for safe drinking water, the MDG targets could still fail through inadequate integration with the bigger water picture. Domestic water use amounts to only 8% of overall global consumption, tiny in comparison with agriculture at 70% and industry at 22%. Integrated water resources management describes the demanding ideal of accommodating these three user categories within the overarching goal of environmental sustainability. Even if local tensions can be resolved, the water cycle itself is blind to national boundaries, creating immense difficulties for bilateral and multilateral reconciliation of competing demands. The significance of manufacturing industry is not just its rising water consumption but also that the goods produced may not be enjoyed by the country which provided the water. Globalisation is moving this virtual wateraround the world, often from countries which can ill afford its loss. For example, production of one cotton shirt requires 2700 litres of water. The omission of the cost of virtual water bears witness to another failure of modern market economics. Attempts are under way to quantify this water footprint for labelling purposes.

Many of the worlds largest cities are replicating the unsustainable culture of rural cotton from Mali economies by over-extraction of vital aquifers. However, nowhere is the need for Betty Press/Panos demand management more acute than the Middle East. Annual per capita use in countries such as Yemen and Syria has fallen as low as 200-300 cubic metres, far below the international scarcity guideline of 1700 cubic metres. Measures found across the region include awareness programmes, water pricing, pollution prevention, and recycled wastewater. The ultimate irony of water management in the 21st century is the increasing interest in restoration of traditional storage technologies, many of them dating from antiquity. top

Virtual water in

Climate Change

The stresses already imposed on water security and access to drinking water will be accentuated by climate change. Almost a third of the World Bank's long term water projects are assessed to be at risk from changes in water run-off by 2030. Every headline impact of global warming has resonance for the planets hydrological cycle. The volume and timing of water flows within individual ecosystems will be affected by disturbance to rainfall patterns and accelerated thawing of glaciers. Water quality in coastal regions will be prone to saline intrusion as sea levels rise.

Some regions will become wetter and others drier; unfortunately the losers in this transition will be the poorer countries. It is no surprise that the significant majority of priority projects identified by these countries in their National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) address issues related to water. The poor resolution of climate prediction models at national scale greatly impedes these and other adaptation plans. The models agree only that rainfall patterns will change, but lack consistency in the direction of change or intensity. Adaptation strategies therefore focus on steps that are appropriate in any event for improved water security. In particular, drinking water sources need to be more resilient to variable rainfall. This is desirable for cities just as much as in rural economies.

Underground aquifers by their nature are ideal vehicles for adaptation, smoothing out variability and less prone to evaporation in rising temperatures. Irrigation efficiency and groundwater recharge programmes fulfil a no regret strategy which acknowledges the risk of change but not its detail.

Glacial lake, Bhutan Piet van der Poel

According to a 2009 World Bank estimate, the costs for developing countries for water-related climate adaptation, excluding coastal protection, will fall between $14-$19 billion per annum. Failure to synchronise the planet's freshwater resources with the demands of humanity may be the crisis that finally spurs governments into decisive action on climate change.

Solution

Principled debate about rights is valuable but it is the economics of water and sanitation that has the potential to make an immediate difference. The cost of inaction is impossible to defend. Economic opportunities are lost in the time spent fetching water, ingirls staying away from school due to the lack of toilet facilities, and in treating illnesses caused by poor sanitation and hygiene. Progress in water and sanitation contributes directly to broader MDG targets for child mortality, gender equity, universal education, and poverty reduction. This multiplier effect is confirmed in studies which show that each $1 of investment in providing safe water yields over $4, whilst the corresponding investment in sanitation delivers a staggering $9 return.

Collecting water in Chennai Such results reinforce the 2006 UN Human Development Report which estimated that failure to invest in water and sanitation was costing sub- Peter Armstrong Saharan Africa about 5% of GDP. A 2010 World Bank study puts a huge price of $54 billion, 6.4% of GDP, on Indias poor state of sanitation, including the loss of tourism revenues.

Potential financial returns of this order would provoke frenzy within private capital markets. But the international donor community provides barely half of UNICEFs relatively modest estimate of $11.3 billion per annum to achieve the water and sanitation MDG targets for all developing countries. One attempt to overcome this lethargy is Sanitation and Water for All. This initiative facilitates high level meetings between donor and recipient governments to gain a greater understanding of the linkages between water, sanitation, and economic growth, in order to commit the appropriate resources. Action at village level is just as important. There has to be greater determination in convincing households of the value of safe sanitation and improved hygiene. Offering government subsidies for latrine construction has been notoriously unsuccessful.

Risky sanitation for children in Nepal Mark Naftalin

Promising results have been achieved in an approach known ascommunity-led sanitation which promotes behaviour change through peer group condemnation of open defecation as an anti-social habit. Creating a sense of ownership within community-level water and sanitation projects in both rural and urban areas has a consistent record of success. Whilst it is difficult to convert small-scale developments into national programmes, an improved understanding of the right to water could translate into wider citizenship movements to bring local and national governments to account.

ater

884 million people lack access to safe water supplies; approximately one in eight people. (5)

3.575 million people die each year from water-related disease. (11)

The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.(1)
People living in the slums often pay 5-10 times more per liter of water than wealthy people living in the same city. (1) An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than a typical person in a developing country slum uses in a whole day. (1)

Sanitation

Only 62% of the worlds population has access to improved sanitation defined as a sanitation facility that ensures hygienic separation of human excreta from human contact. (5)

Lack of sanitation is the worlds biggest cause of infection. (9)

2.5 billion people lack access to improved sanitation, including 1.2 billion people who have no facilities at all. (5) Of the 60 million people added to the worlds towns and cities every year, most occupy impoverished slums and shanty-towns with no sanitation facilities.(8)

Children

Diarrhea remains in the second leading cause of death among children under five globally. Nearly one in five child deaths about 1.5 million each year is due to diarrhea. It kills more young children than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. (13)

Every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease. (2)

Diarrhea is more prevalent in the developing world due, in large part, to the lack of safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, as well as poorer overall health and nutritional status. (13)

Children in poor environments often carry 1,000 parasitic worms in their bodies at any time. (8) In the developing world, 24,000 children under the age of five die every day from preventable causes like diarrhea contracted from unclean water. (13) 1.4 million children die as a result of diarrhea each year. (11)

Women In just one day, more than 200 million hours of womens time is consumed for the most basic of human needs collecting water for domestic use.
This lost productivity is greater than the combined number of hours worked in a week by employees at Wal*Mart, United Parcel Service, McDonalds, IBM, Target, and Kroger, according to Gary White, co-founder of Water.org.

Millions of women and children spend several hours a day collecting water from distant, often polluted sources. (1) A study by the International Water and Sanitation Centre (IRC) of community water and sanitation projects in 88 communities found that projects designed and run with the full participation of women are more sustainable and effective than those that do not. This supports an earlier World Bank study that found that womens participation was strongly associated with water and sanitation project effectiveness.(7)

Disease

At any given time, half of the worlds hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from diseases associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene. (1)

The majority of the illness in the world is caused by fecal matter.9 Economics
Over 50 percent of all water projects fail and less than five percent of projects are visited, and far less than one percent have any longer-term monitoring. (10) Investment in safe drinking water and sanitation contributes to economic growth. For each $1 invested, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates returns of $3 $34, depending on the region and technology.(14)

Almost two in every three people who need safe drinking water survive on less than $2 a day and one in three on less than $1 a day.
Households, not public agencies, often make the largest investment in basic sanitation, with the ratio of household to government investment typically 10 to 1. (15) Investment in drinking-water and sanitation would result in 272 million more school attendance days a year. The value of deaths averted, based on discounted future earnings, would amount to US$ 3.6 billion a year.(15)

Environment

Less than 1% of the worlds fresh water (or about 0.007% of all water on earth) is readily accessible for direct human use. (12)

More than 80% of sewage in developing countries is discharged untreated, polluting rivers, lakes and coastal areas. (16)

The UN estimates that by 2025, forty-eight nations, with combined population of 2.8 billion, will face freshwater stress or scarcity. Our Water.org High School Curriculum Agriculture is the largest consumer of freshwater by far: about 70% of all freshwater withdrawals go to irrigated agriculture. (14) At home the average American uses between 100 and 175 gallons of water a day. That is less than 25 years ago, but it does not include the amount of water used to feed and clothe us. Conserving water helps not only to preserve irreplaceable natural resources, but also to reduce the strain on urban wastewater management systems. Wastewater is costly to treat, and requires continuous investment to ensure that the water we return to our waterways is as clean as possible

One Billion Affected

Without water, life would not exist. It is a prerequisite for all human and economic development. Yet today, nearly one billion people about one in eight lack access to clean water. More than twice that many, 2.5 billion people, dont have access to a toilet.

There has been significant public attention paid to the issue of water scarcity lately, and for good reason. Although water is a renewable resource, it is also a finite one. Only 2.53 percent of earths water is fresh, and some two-thirds of that is locked up in glaciers and permanent snow cover. But despite the very real danger of future global water shortages, for the vast majority of the nearly one billion people without safe drinking water, todays water crisis is not an issue of scarcity, but of access.

A common struggle
In most developed nations, we take access to safe water for granted. But this wasnt always the case. A little more than 100 years ago, New York, London and Paris were centers of infectious disease. Child death rates were as high then as they are now in much of Sub-Saharan Africa. It was sweeping reforms in water and sanitation that enabled human progress to leap forward. It should come as no surprise that in 2007, a poll by the British Medical Journal found that clean water and sanitation comprised the most important medical advancement since 1840. The health and economic impacts of todays global water crisis are staggering.

More than 3.5 million people die each year from water-related disease; 84 percent are children. Nearly all deaths, 98 percent, occur in the developing world. Lack of access to clean water and sanitation kills children at a rate equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing every four hours. Lack of sanitation is the worlds biggest cause of infection. Millions of women and children spend several hours each day collecting water from distant, often polluted sources. This is time not spent working at an income-generating job, caring for family members, or attending school.

443 million school days are lost each year due to water-related illness.

The good news

We know how to bring people clean water and improved sanitation. Were not waiting for a magic cure. And the solutions are simple and cost-effective

India: Water and Sanitation

Data

Access to improved source of water (Urban/Rural/Total)

96%/84%/88% (2008)[1]

Access to improved sanitation (Urban/Rural/Total)

54%/21%/31% (2008)[1]

Average urban water use (liter/capita/day)

150 (1999)[2]

Average urban water and sewer bill for 20m3

US$2 (2007)[3]

Share of householdmetering

55% in urban areas (1999)[2]

Share of collectedwastewater treated

27% (2003)[4]

Annual investment in water supply and sanitation

US$5 / capita[5]

Institutions

Decentralization to municipalities Partial

National water and sanitation company

No

Water and sanitation regulator

No

Responsibility for policy setting

Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation; Ministry of Rural Development

Sector law

No

Number of urban service providers

3,255 (1991)

Number of rural service providers

about 100,000