Aerial shots of Ricefields near Baucau, Timor Leste. Opportunities There is not a global water shortage as such, but individual countries and regions need to urgently tackle the critical problems presented by water stress. Water has to be treated as a scarce resource, with a far stronger focus on managing demand. Note: There is a difference between a country that has little water but enough resources to buy all it needs, and an undeveloped country that has neither.
Gulf nations like Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait top the list in the ratio of available local resources per person, but these countries are capable of trading one precious liquid for another or financing desalination efforts. Below we take a look at the five countries most threatened by severe water shortages that do not have the money to purchase it.
Violence and unrest typically rule news about Libya, but the broader fact is that the country goes through frequent and severe stretches without fuel, food and water. The conflict is unlikely to end due to natural resources located in the area and the possibility of offshore oil, which means the people will continue to go thirsty.
Yemen is a hotbed of conflict and a waypoint for terrorists traveling through the Middle East, and as such it is often in a weakened position to receive aid that includes fresh water. Desalination plants can produce as much as 50 million gallons of freshwater a day—California has 11 desalination plants, and another 10 are being planned. But despite costs that are half of what they once were, desalinated water is still about twice as expensive as extracted freshwater.
Water transfers from wet to dry regions, such as from the Colorado River basin to California, are another expensive option already in use. Proposals have periodically forwarded to pipe water south from Alaska and Canada, but costs and complexity have prevented any further planning or development.
Perhaps the simplest solution is to use less water. Los Angeles has grown by a million people since the s, but water usage is still the same. Water meters and careful pricing help discourage waste, while fixing aging infrastructure will keep more water in the system—a water mains break in the U.
In the agriculture sector, reducing irrigation by as little as two percent could avert shortages in one-third of the affected basins; farmers could save water by using drip irrigation, soil moisture sensors, and planting more drought-resistant crops. And every American can save more water at home in multiple ways, from taking shorter showers to not rinsing dishes under a running faucet before loading them into a dishwasher, a practice that wastes around 20 gallons of water for each load.
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