Water scarcity involves water stress, water shortage or deficits, and water crisis. The concept of water stress is relatively new. Water stress is the difficulty of obtaining sources of fresh water for use, because of depleting resources. A water crisis is a situation where the available potable, unpolluted water within a region is less than that region's demand.
The earth has 326,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons of water. With 7 billion people, the earth has 46 billion gallons of water per person. This water is infinitely recyclable. Israel is now desalinizing water at a cost of US$0.53 per cubic meter. Singapore is desalinizing water for US$0.49 per cubic meter. After being desalinized at Jubail, Saudi Arabia, water is pumped 200 miles (320 km) inland though a pipeline to the capital city of Riyadh. According to MSNBC, a report by Lux Research estimated that the worldwide desalinated water supply will triple between 2008 and 2020.
Read more about Water Stress: Measurement, Economic Scarcity, Water Stress, Water Crisis, Effects On Climate, Outlook, Global Experiences in Managing Water Crisis, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words water and/or stress:
“I think of the nestling fallen into the deep grass,
The turtle gasping in the dusty rubble of the highway,
The paralytic stunned in the tub, and the water rising,—
All things innocent, hapless, forsaken.”
—Theodore Roethke (1908–1963)
“While ... we cannot and must not hide our concern for grave world dangers, and while, at the same time, we cannot build walls around ourselves and hide our heads in the sand, we must go forward with all our strength to stress and to strive for international peace. In this effort America must and will protect herself.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)