Climate change affects the water balance of our planet: resulting in more flooding or drought. Around the world, alarms are ringing about the depletion of groundwater supplies. The United Nations predicts a global water shortage by 2030.
As human cultures develop, water is emerging as the central resource of local and global politics. Pressures for the privatization and commodification of water are continually exerted, often under the guise of development programs that are described as linking growth and security. Sci-fi scenarios abound, as blueprints are designed to capture clouds, drag icebergs, and create mountains and lakes to provide water to thirsty nations.
Almost everywhere water is wasted and until people face water scarcity, they believe that access to water is obvious and natural. With urbanization and lifestyle changes, water consumption is set to increase.
There is already more wastewater generated and dispersed today than at any time in the history of our planet: more than one in six people does not have access to drinking water, i.e. 1, 1 billion people, and more than two in six do not have access to drinking water. sanitation, or 2.6 billion people. You should know that these figures only represent people in very bad conditions. In reality, these numbers should be much higher.
As the world's population tripled in the 20th century, the use of renewable water resources has increased sixfold. Over the next fifty years, the world's population will grow another 40-50%. This demographic growth - coupled with industrialization and urbanization - will result in an increasing demand for water and will have serious consequences for the environment. People lack drinking water and sanitation and therefore hygiene, a factor of disease.
This burgeoning environmental crisis is only just beginning, it is all the more critical that increased use of water by humans not only reduces 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 can no longer play their regulatory role. The balances are upset. Will we have to wait for a point of no return to react radically?
