By Somonnoy Banerjee
With around two-thirds of the earth being covered with water and around 60% of the human body comprising of water, we can understand how important this element is for life to exist on this planet. Water is the foundation of life and livelihoods and is a key to sustainable development. Human life is impossible to imagine without water.
If there is such an abundance of water on earth, then what is the crisis all about? The crisis is about freshwater that can be consumed to sustain human life. Around 60% of freshwater comes from river basins that cross national borders. Due to this, water is a geopolitical issue and an issue of national concern. There is a shortage of freshwater in various parts of the world which is due to overpopulation, industrial waste contaminating freshwater etc. Water scarcity affects more than 40% of the global population (World Bank Report). Sustaining nine billion people on earth would require an increase in agricultural production and meeting the industrial needs of the growing population. Companies related to the food industry and the agricultural industry would face a huge challenge in identifying reliable and sufficient water resources. Other industrial sectors would face challenges as well. Industrial units need water for operations related to manufacturing etc.
Climate change will worsen the situation by altering hydrological cycles, making water more unpredictable and increasing the frequency and intensity of floods and droughts. The roughly one billion people living in monsoonal basins and the 500 million people living in deltas are especially vulnerable. Flood damages are estimated in $120 billion per year (only from property damage), and droughts pose, among others, constraints to the rural poor, highly dependent on rainfall variability for subsistence (World Bank Report). On 28 July 2010, through Resolution 64/292, the United Nations General Assembly recognized the human right to water and sanitation and acknowledged that sanitation and clean drinking water are essential to the realisation of all human rights.
People living in India take water for granted. India is blessed with around eight major river systems comprising of more than 400 rivers in India. India does not have a state in which there are no rivers. The state with the least number of rivers passing through it is Nagaland. 3 rivers pass through the state of Nagaland. Now, compare the situation of India with countries having no rivers passing through it. Bahrain, Oman, Maldives, Nauru, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait etc. are a few examples of nations having no rivers passing through it. These countries rely on groundwater and water extracted from the desalination plants which convert seawater to drinking water by removing salt. Even though India has plenty of water resources, states like Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are fighting over water. The government of India should invest more money to establish water desalination plants along the east and the west coast. The government must invest more in the research and development of new water conservation technologies.
Water is a unique resource which must be managed properly to meet the demand of the growing world population. Water management can be done by educating the youth, investing in new water conservation technologies, recycling wastewater, building rainwater harvesting plants in regions of high rainfall. For example, the state of Mizoram receives the highest amount of rainfall in the entire world. Rainwater harvesting plants should be built in these types of areas. It is quite interesting to know how the traditional Mizo houses have sloping roofs to harvest rainwater. These types of roofs can be built by people living in areas of high rainfall such as Mumbai. If we save a single drop of fresh water in our everyday life, we will hopefully never face a situation like Cape Town in South Africa. What Cape Town is facing now, we might face the same situation in the future if we do not change our attitude towards the usage of water. So, beware of the water crisis.
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