water issues

water facts





2006 awards


Some Water Facts:

The underground aquifer that supplies one-third of the water for the continental US is being depleted 8 times faster than it is being replenished.

Saudi Arabia is a net exporter of wheat using non-renewable water reserves. It is expected to have completely depleted all of its reserves within 50 years.

The manufacture of computer wafers, used in the production of computer chips, uses up to 18 million litres of water per day. Globally, the industry uses 1.5 trillion litres of water and produces 300 billion litres of wastewater every year.

Available fresh water amounts to less than one half of one percent of all the water on Earth. The rest is sea water, or is frozen in the polar ice. Fresh water is naturally renewable only by rainfall, at the rate of 40-50,000 cubic km per year.

In India, some households pay a staggering 25 percent of their income on water.

Poor residents of Lima, Peru, pay private vendors as much as $3 for a cubic meter for buckets of often-contaminated water while the more affluent pay 30 cents per cubic meter for treated municipal tap water.

More than five million people, most of them children, die every year from illnesses caused by drinking poor-quality water.

More than one billion people live in arid regions that will face absolute water scarcity by 2025.

"Blue Gold"
"The Final Frontier"
Public Services International: http://www.world-psi.org
Fortune magazine
World Water Vision.