How fresh water's stock gets affected by overuse
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the biggest societal and economic risk for the next ten years.
The report assesses risks that are global in nature and have the potential to cause significant negative impact across entire countries and industries.
Global risks from overuse and shortage, poor water infrastructure and management came out on top – not as problems outlined by models and simulations that start from a diversity of assumptions; they are already facts today and are rapidly getting worse.
Water is key for life, central to societal development. Water risks affect industrialised and developing economies alike; repercussions of its overuse and increasing shortage are multiple and complex, widespread and severe. Let me mention five aspects:
1. Water for people: according to the World Health Organization there are still more than 700 million people without access to so-called ‘improved’ water – here the trend is positive: the proportion of the world’s population with access to improved drinking water sources increased from 76% to 89% globally between 1990 and 2012. But ‘improved’ is by no means ‘safe’. An article by Gérard Payen, former chairman of Aquafed and Member of the United Nations Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation, states that close to 2 billion people use water that is unsafe and dangerous for their health, while 3.4 billion people use water of doubtful quality, at least from time to time. And these problems are getting worse, due to insufficient investment in water infrastructure – also in advanced economies.
2. Water for food: we start seeing the first problems in regions where natural buffers – groundwater reservoirs – have been used up in times of normal rainfall. In other words: media will see drought as the problem, but droughts come and go. The real problem is that we destroyed the ‘natural’ safety nets by overusing groundwater. So without a change in the way we use water, the global growth in population and prosperity are rapidly leading us into massive shortfalls in global cereal production.
The report assesses risks that are global in nature and have the potential to cause significant negative impact across entire countries and industries.
Global risks from overuse and shortage, poor water infrastructure and management came out on top – not as problems outlined by models and simulations that start from a diversity of assumptions; they are already facts today and are rapidly getting worse.
Water is key for life, central to societal development. Water risks affect industrialised and developing economies alike; repercussions of its overuse and increasing shortage are multiple and complex, widespread and severe. Let me mention five aspects:
1. Water for people: according to the World Health Organization there are still more than 700 million people without access to so-called ‘improved’ water – here the trend is positive: the proportion of the world’s population with access to improved drinking water sources increased from 76% to 89% globally between 1990 and 2012. But ‘improved’ is by no means ‘safe’. An article by Gérard Payen, former chairman of Aquafed and Member of the United Nations Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation, states that close to 2 billion people use water that is unsafe and dangerous for their health, while 3.4 billion people use water of doubtful quality, at least from time to time. And these problems are getting worse, due to insufficient investment in water infrastructure – also in advanced economies.
2. Water for food: we start seeing the first problems in regions where natural buffers – groundwater reservoirs – have been used up in times of normal rainfall. In other words: media will see drought as the problem, but droughts come and go. The real problem is that we destroyed the ‘natural’ safety nets by overusing groundwater. So without a change in the way we use water, the global growth in population and prosperity are rapidly leading us into massive shortfalls in global cereal production.
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