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Some areas
have far too much water and suffer from floods, like Bangladesh and
the flood plains of the Mississippi in the United States. Other areas,
like Africa and West Asia, suffer severe droughts. The problem of water
availability is most serious in Africa and West Asia. If water consumption
continues at its present rate, by 2025 two out of three people will
not have enough water for their basic needs.
Mining and
industry pollute rivers with deadly chemicals. Farmers spray crops with
pesticides and fertilisers which are washed into rivers and lakes. In
many parts of the world, people use rivers as open sewers and garbage
dumps. Near coasts, when too much water is taken from aquifers (big
underground reservoirs of fresh water), sea water seeps in and makes
the water salty and undrinkable.
If you take more money out of a bank than you put in, you get an overdraft
and eventually go broke. We are doing this to our aquifers all over
the world. In West Asia, North Africa, China, India, Russia and the
USA, we run huge annual water overdrafts. This, combined with the discharge
of untreated industrial waste and sewage into water systems makes water
shortage one of our most critical environmental issues.
 Though
everything may seem everlasting, caring should start from the youth
in me
Angela Shima, Philippines
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click picture to enlarge
Kevin Day, Jamaica
Worldwide, polluted water
affects the health of 1.2 billion people and contributes to the death
of 15 million children under five every year. For example, in Asia, one
in three people do not have access to safe drinking water and one in two
have no access to hygienic sanitation.
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Almost all living things on Earth need water to live, yet humans pollute and waste it recklessly. More than a fifth of the world’s population doesn’t have enough: it is likely people will go to war over water in your lifetime.
