| glug! |
We are facing a water crisis. Gobar
Times takes a dive and finds out why drinking bottled water and flushing gallons down
the toilet won’t really help. Glug. |
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| "Water is fundamental
for life and health. The human right to water is indispensable for leading a healthy life
in human dignity. It is a pre-requisite to the realization of all other human rights"
- United Nations 2002 |
Water purity by choice.
Water scarcity by design.
Today, over two billion people, one third of all humanity, have no access to pure
drinking water. At the same time, contaminated drinking water is the reason why every
other person in the developing world is ill. Only five per cent of all waste water in the
world is treated.
| Coming Water Stress By
2025, more than 2.8 billion people living in 48 countries will face water stress or water
scarcity, based on the recently revised United Nations population projections. By 2050 the
number of countries will face water stress or scarcity will rise to 54, and their combined
population to 4 billion people- 40 per cent of the projected global population of 9.4
billion. |
According to the calculations of Sandra Postel, water
expert with the internationally respected World Watch Institute in Washington, the demands
of cities, homes, offices, stores and restaurants make up only one-tenth of the world's
water consumption. The problem is that this 10 per cent must be provided to relatively
small areas, where local water resources are less and less able to satisfy demand. On a
global scale, two-thirds of the water diverted from rivers or pumped out of the ground is
used for agricultural applications. The thirst of burgeoning cities and booming economies
can only be slaked by reallocating water from the agricultural sector. However, in many
countries, this would mean that the war on hunger was lost before it could even begin.
Wells and borewells by water-intensive agricultural or
industrial users are destroying groundwater in large tracts of India. Agricultural
runoffs, sewage and industrial waste are contaminating fesh water sources.
Ironically the bottled water industry is the result of this
scarcity of clean drinking water. Wih water quality in most Indian cities being absymal,
the all-India market for packaged water is growing at the rate of nearly 40 per cent per
annum. |
