Global Discord Caused in Part on Drinking Water Lack

Have you ever heard the adage, “Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink”? It’s a classic saying that is much more true today than it was when it was first written. The earth is made up of 70% water; however, even that isn’t sufficient to sustain all the life on earth adequately. In fact, over 2 billion people worldwide don’t have access to the fresh water which they depend on for drinking and sanitation, and that number is likely to escalate to substantially more than 4 billion by the year 2050 unless we take more extreme action to overcome the drinking water shortage through emergency water filter methods.

It may shock people to recognize that areas of the USA are going to be lacking drinking water by as early as 2025. States like Arizona and California already are feeling the pinch. Much of this shortage might be blamed on the belief that 85% of water within the U.S. is employed in agriculture. Most of us have had to endure short periods of time without water due to local problems, but it really has never bothered us too much, because we know the outage will shortly be remedied. However, some parts of the country are already forced to live with water rationing meaning they’re not being allowed to water their lawns or do other non-essential jobs using water.

Nevertheless, what we feel in this country is nothing compared to the way it is in many other parts on the planet. It’s estimated that at least 80 countries now have crucial shortages of water which creates a risk both to the health of the human population as well as the economics in the country. Poverty could be the single most significant problem when it comes to these disadvantaged countries, because they lack the vital resources necessary to cleanse their water resources and distribute them to people located there.

Lots of the global issues between nations, like the one concerning Israel and Syria, are sparked by political battles over water rights. It’s hard to negotiate any type of treaty in the event the nations taking part are fighting over the rights to water from the same river which happens to pass through both countries. There are already more than a dozen nations receiving 75% of their water from rivers that flow through unfriendly countries upstream.

Not enough water, coupled with rapidly-increasing populations, is going to present a lot of problems throughout the next century until ways are found to combat the issue such as through municipal water filtration.