Water Scarcity: A Global Issue

Consider yourself lucky whenever you pour yourself a glass of water. Today, on every continent in the world, there are people who, because of water scarcity, spend their entire day looking for clean water.

Water scarcity is pretty much what it sounds like — when water is so scarce in a region that the people there do not have enough clean water to drink. While the majority of people on earth have access to water, there are still millions of people who do not. According to reports the United Nations created as part of the Water for Life initiative and the non-profit water.org, one in ten people do not have access to clean water. Worldwide, that is roughly 783 million people. Imagine 783 million people who struggle daily for the clean drink of water that luckier people wake up to. There are two kinds of water scarcity. The first is physical water scarcity, which occurs in areas without natural water resources, such as deserts like the Sahara. The second is economic water scarcity, which occurs in areas where there are enough water resources for people to use, but they are poorly managed and allowed to be contaminated.

Physical water scarcity is most often caused by drought. A drought occurs when it rains far less in a given area than it usually does, creating shortages in water supply. Droughts can be declared after as little as 15 days without rainfall and can continue indefinitely. The longest drought in recorded history lasted for 400 years in the Atacama Desert in Chile. However, most modern droughts are not nearly so severe. In the United States, the National Drought Mitigation Center finds only the panhandle of Oklahoma and northern Georgia experiencing ‘extreme drought’. California experienced severe drought between 2012 to 2017, while Florida experienced severe drought between 2006-2007, and again in 2017. Droughts are considered severe when water shortages become common and extreme when major crop loss occurs. Globally, the Center shows that there is ‘extreme drought’ in the Middle East and eastern Australia and ‘severe drought’ in parts of northern Africa. 

Droughts are a natural process that have occurred throughout history. The effects of prolonged drought often depend on both severity and how people react to them. Sometimes, like in California, drought can simply lead to a change of what is easily available for purchase in grocery stores. Others, like the 1900 drought in India, which had a death toll between 250,000 and 3.25 million, can lead to mass migration, famine, and humanitarian crisis. Droughts can start unexpectedly and last indefinitely. This unpredictability is a major factor in what turns droughts from unpleasant to deadly. Climate scientists are currently predicting that the same human activities which will lead to global climate change will trigger more droughts. The droughts triggered will be less natural and therefore even more unpredictable.

Economic water scarcity, on the other hand, is the result of plentiful water resources being mismanaged and leading to contamination and disease, sometimes as a result of war or conflict. In addition, water overuse and pollution are increasing global water insecurity.  Contamination occurs whenever something is mixed into a water supply; if it is harmful to humans, animals, or plants, it is then referred to as pollution. Pollution can be as simple as a dead animal dumped into the river that supplies a village, or as complex as large multinational corporations building factories that pollute water sources. It can include oil, carcasses, chemicals, and fecal matter. When any one of those is dumped into a main water supply, it contaminates the entire supply, rendering it undrinkable.

Economic water scarcity occurs all over the world. In Linfen, China, residents say that they choke on coal dust daily and cannot drink the water because of the coal mixed into it. In Ranipet, India, leather tanning wastes contaminate groundwater with the chemical hexavalent chromium, leading to water that residents say stings like an insect. This is the same chemical whose presence in a California’s water supply triggered a massive lawsuit against Pacific Gas and Electric Company, as depicted in the 2000 film Erin Brockovich. Worldwide, water is not always contaminated as a result of corporate pollution. In Mexico City, after a 1985 earthquake damaged the pipes and tunnels the city had built for water, the government could not manage to repair the damage. Now, over 30 years later, the city still does not have access to clean drinking water. Drinking the water in any of these places, including parts of the USA, will lead to health problems.

The consequences of waterborne diseases are deadly. They can lead to bacterial infections, typhoid fever, cholera, skin trauma and even brain damage.

Finally, world conflicts drive water insecurity. When a region is embroiled in a conflict or war, it becomes much more difficult for the people in that region to access water. Sometimes it is simply because there is too much violence. In conflict zones, like in Afghanistan or South Sudan, even walking to a well can become deadly, not to mention what happens when the water is further away than across the village. Some governments, especially dictatorships, restrict access to water to exert control over the people they govern. Additionally, modern weapons often have a side effect of polluting water. Dzerzinsk, Russia has a contaminated water supply because it was the country’s primary chemical weapons manufacturing site throughout the Cold War. Chernobyl, Ukraine, the infamous site of a nuclear meltdown, still has contaminated water because of that meltdown.

Water is life. That’s not an exaggeration or a metaphor. Large swaths of people die from waterborne diseases, or from dehydration, as a direct consequence of water scarcity. A human body is largely made of water, and daily water intake is absolutely necessary to replenish that. Water is more important for survival than food, and global access to water is a fundamental human issue. It is the first thing that humans need. As water scarcity increases globally, we are all in danger. Without water, without that first thing, life slowly starts to shut down.