'Triple crisis' will ensue as fresh water demand will outstrip supply by 40% within 2030
1 min read . Updated: 19 Mar 2023, 09:57 PM IST
Premium- A report on economics of water have alerted that countries need to start to manage water as a global common good, because most countries are highly dependent on their neighbours for water supplies
Acute water crisis is not a new threat to human existence on Earth. Excessive extraction of fresh water for activities like agriculture, mining, and manufacturing among others are responsible for the rapidly deteriorating supply of fresh water on Earth.
The experts have warned that if governments dont take action immediately, fresh water supply will outstrip the supply of fresh water by a whopping 40%, by 2030, seven years from now.
A report on economics of water have alerted that countries need to start to manage water as a global common good, because most countries are highly dependent on their neighbours for water supplies, and overuse, pollution and the climate crisis threaten water supplies globally.
“The scientific evidence is that we have a water crisis. We are misusing water, polluting water, and changing the whole global hydrological cycle, through what we are doing to the climate. It’s a triple crisis," Johan Rockstrom, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, and a lead author of the report, told the Guardian.
Water is fundamental to the climate crisis and the global food crisis. “There will be no agricultural revolution unless we fix water," said Rockstrom. “Behind all these challenges we are facing, there’s always water, and we never talk about water."
Most countries depend for about half of their water supply on the evaporation of water from neighbouring countries – known as “green" water because it is held in soils and delivered from transpiration in forests and other ecosystems, when plants take up water from the soil and release vapour into the air from their leaves, the Guardian report quotes.
The UN water summit, led by the governments of the Netherlands and Tajikistan, will take place in New York on 22 March.
It will mark the first time in more than four decades the UN has met to discuss water, with previous attempts stymied by governments reluctant to countenance any form of international governance of the resource.
