![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![]() | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![]() | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![]() |
![]() |
You are in: Sci/Tech | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![]()
|
![]() |
Thursday, 22 March, 2001, 00:00 GMT
World warned on water refugees
![]() By BBC News Online's environment correspondent Alex Kirby
Two people in three across the world will face water shortages by 2025, a UK charity claims. Many of these people will be forced from their homes to seek clean water supplies elsewhere, according to the charity, Tearfund, a relief and development agency.
And dwindling water resources could make food supplies prohibitively expensive for more than a billion people. In a report, Running on Empty, published to mark World Water Day on Thursday, Tearfund says the world's water supply is not keeping pace with the demands being made on it. Shrinking lakes Although efficient water management will enable rich parts of the world to cope, poorer countries will suffer massively, the report says. With consumption having risen six-fold between 1900 and 1995, Tearfund says, the developing world should prepare to greet millions of "water refugees", people forced to leave their homes in search of clean supplies. Already, the charity claims, the scale of water shortage is alarming:
Basic human right Tearfund claims the growth of water shortages threatens to reduce the global food supply by more than 10%. Agriculture already takes more than 70% of the world's fresh water, with the proportion rising to more than 90% in Asia and Africa.
"For the 1.3bn of the world's population who live on US $1 a day or less, higher grain prices could quickly become life-threatening," the report notes. Joanne Green, Tearfund's policy officer, said: "Water is a basic human right. Without it, societies wither and people die. Yet today we are standing on the brink of a global water crisis which could deprive billions of people of access to clean water. "We have successfully harnessed water for energy, industry and irrigation, but at an increasingly terrible cost." Exhausted reserves The report says there are several causes for the unfolding crisis, including the failure by developing countries to regulate, manage and invest in water.
China, for example, Tearfund says, stands to see its population grow from 1.2bn today to 1.5bn in 2030, while its demand for water goes up by 66% over the same period. It claims another factor exacerbating the crisis is global warming, with some scientists predicting an increase in droughts and the spread of deserts. And Tearfund says many countries are using their groundwater reserves at an unsustainable rate, with India a glaring example - Delhi may have exhausted its reserves within 15 years. A 90-second shower It says about 40% of the world's people live with drinking water shortages today, a figure which over the next quarter century could rise to 66%. Tearfund welcomes the UK Government's strategy for tackling the water crisis, which includes halving the proportion of people unable to reach or to afford safe drinking water by 2015. The charity wants water high on the agenda of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. Joanne Green said: "In the UK each person still has an average of 150 litres of water a day at their disposal. "In some of the poorest countries, people are surviving on a daily ration the equivalent of a 90-second shower, or less." |
![]() |
See also:
![]() Internet links:
![]() The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites Top Sci/Tech stories now:
![]() ![]() Links to more Sci/Tech stories are at the foot of the page.
![]() |
![]() |
Links to more Sci/Tech stories
|
![]() |
![]() |
^^ Back to top News Front Page | World | UK | UK Politics | Business | Sci/Tech | Health | Education | Entertainment | Talking Point | In Depth | AudioVideo ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To BBC Sport>> | To BBC Weather>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © MMIII | News Sources | Privacy |