The Emerging Global Water Crisis: Managing Scarcity and Conflict Between Water Users

298Citations
Citations of this article
528Readers
Mendeley users who have this article in their library.
Get full text

Abstract

For the first time in human history, human use and pollution of freshwater have reached a level where water scarcity will potentially limit food production, ecosystem function, and urban supply in the decades to come. The primary reason for this shortage is population growth, which has increased at a faster rate than food production for some years and will add up to 3 billion more people by the middle of the twenty-first century, mostly in poor and water-short countries. Water quality degradation has also contributed significantly to a number of problems of global concern, including human drinking water supply and species survival. As of today, some 1.1 billion planetary inhabitants do not have access to clean drinking water, and 2.6 billion do not have sanitation services. Water pollution is a leading cause of death worldwide, and transmits or supports numerous debilitating diseases to populations forced to drink contaminated water. Agriculture is by far the leading user of freshwater worldwide, accounting for almost 85% of global consumption. Because of growing demand, we will need to raise food production by nearly 50% in the next 50 years to maintain our present per capita supply, assuming that the productivity of existing farmland does not decline. Further, we will have to increase it by much more if we are also to alleviate malnutrition among the poorest members of our current population. For a variety of reasons, feasible expansion of irrigated agriculture will be able to accommodate only a portion of this increased demand, and the rest must come from an increase in the productivity of rainfed agriculture. In the absence of coordinated planning and international cooperation at an unprecedented scale, the next half century will be plagued by a host of severe water-related problems, threatening the well being of many terrestrial ecosystems and drastically impairing human health, particularly in the poorest regions of the world. The latter portion of this chapter discusses ways in which this emerging crisis may be mitigated. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cite

CITATION STYLE

APA

Jury, W. A., & Vaux, H. J. (2007). The Emerging Global Water Crisis: Managing Scarcity and Conflict Between Water Users. Advances in Agronomy. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2113(07)95001-4

Register to see more suggestions

Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.

Already have an account?

Save time finding and organizing research with Mendeley

Sign up for free