Fresh Water Is A Critical Resource Issue

Fresh water is emerging as the most critical resource issue facing humanity. While the supply of fresh water is limited, both the world’s population and demand for the resource continues to expand rapidly. As Janet Abramovitz has written: “Today, we withdraw water far faster than it can be recharged—unsustainably mining what was once a renewable resource” (Abramovitz, 1996). Abramovitz estimates that the amount of fresh water withdrawn for human uses has risen nearly 40-fold in the past 300 years, with over half of the increase coming since 1950 (Abramovitz, 1996).

The world’s rapid population growth over the last century has been a major factor in increasing global water usage. But demand for water is also rising because of urbanization, economic development, and improved living standards. Between 1900 and 1995, for example, global water withdrawals increased by over six times—more than double the rate of population growth (Gleick, 1998). In developing countries, water withdrawals are rising more rapidly—by four percent to eight percent a year for the past decade—also because of rapid population growth and increasing demand per capita (Marcoux, 1994).

Moreover, increasing pollution is shrinking the supply of fresh water even further. In many countries, lakes and rivers are used as receptacles for an assortment of wastes—including untreated or partially treated municipal sewage, industrial poisons, and harmful chemicals that leach into surface and ground water during agricultural activities.

Caught between (a) finite and increasingly polluted water supplies, and (b) rapidly rising demand from population growth and development, many developing countries face difficult and uneasy choices. As the World Bank has warned, lack of water is likely to be the major factor limiting economic development in the decades to come (Serageldin, 1995).