The UAE has one of the highest per capita water consumption rates in the world (500 liters per day) even though the country is located in one of the most water scares regions of the world. What are the reasons behind this scarcity of water? List the initiatives taken by the government of UAE to provide Clean Drinking Water and Sanitation to its people.
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Answer:
Water scarcity (also called water stress or water crisis) is the lack of fresh water resources to meet the standard water demand. Humanity is facing a water crisis, due to unequal distribution (exacerbated by climate change) resulting in some very wet and some very dry geographic locations, plus a sharp rise in global freshwater demand in recent decades driven by industry. Water scarcity can also be caused by droughts, lack of rainfall, or pollution. This was listed in 2019 by the World Economic Forum as one of the largest global risks in terms of potential impact over the next decade.[1] It is manifested by partial or no satisfaction of expressed demand, economic competition for water quantity or quality, disputes between users, irreversible depletion of groundwater, and negative impacts on the environment.[2] Two-thirds of the global population (4 billion people) live under conditions of severe water scarcity at least 1 month of the year.[3][4] Half a billion people in the world face severe water scarcity all year round.[3] Half of the world's largest cities experience water scarcity.[4]
Baseline water stress per region: the ratio of total annual water withdrawals to total available annual renewable supply, accounting for upstream consumptive use
The essence of global water scarcity is the geographic and temporal mismatch between fresh water demand and availability.[5][6] The increasing world population, improving living standards, changing consumption patterns, and expansion of irrigated agriculture are the main driving forces for the rising global demand for water.[7][8] Climate change, such as altered weather-patterns (including droughts or floods), deforestation, increased pollution, green house gases, and wasteful use of water can cause insufficient supply.[9] At the global level and on an annual basis, enough freshwater is available to meet such demand, but spatial and temporal variations of water demand and availability are large, leading to (physical) water scarcity in several parts of the world during specific times of the year.[3] Scarcity varies over time as a result of natural hydrological variability, but varies even more so as a function of prevailing economic policy, planning and management approaches. Scarcity can be expected to intensify with most forms of economic development, but, if correctly identified, many of its causes can be predicted, avoided or mitigated.[2]
The International Resource Panel of the UN states that governments have tended to invest heavily in largely inefficient solutions: mega-projects like dams, canals, aqueducts, pipelines and water reservoirs, which are generally neither environmentally sustainable nor economically viable. The most cost-effective way of decoupling water use from economic growth, according to the scientific panel, is for governments to create holistic water management plans that take into account the entire water cycle: from source to distribution, economic use, treatment, recycling, reuse and return to the environment