Water scarcity and global human needs: key research issues

Humanity's Global Need For Water

As the Earth's population of human inhabitants continues to swell in exponential fashion, moving from 6 billion to 7 billion during the last decade alone, humanity has been forced to confront a crisis it has long ignored: the finite amount of fresh water on the planet. Seemingly every human behavior, from agriculture to armed conflict, requires massive amounts of potable water for a wide array of reasons. Drinking, bathing, waste disposal, washing clothes and dishes, watering lawns and gardens; all of these daily activities are dependent on an available supply of running water. Even specialized activities like cooling heavy machinery during construction projects, clearing silt and debris within mine shafts, and extinguishing house or wild fires necessitate the collection, storage and dispersal of tremendous reserves of water. Despite the seemingly endless supply of fresh water emanating from the world's creeks, streams, rivers, lakes and ground wells, the accelerated pace of human procreation is simply unsustainable because the world contains a limited amount of this precious resource.

Conducting a comprehensive study of human activity and the concept of "peak water," which refers to the point in time when humanity's needs exceed the planet's water supply, is an important step in the process of formulating viable solutions to this pressing problem. The relevance of a worldwide water supply study can be clearly defined, as the wide range of cultural beliefs and practices concerning water usage represents useful data in terms of predicting when "peak water" may occur. For example, a similar study published in 2007 by the scholarly journal Water Resources Management found that "the U.S.A. appears to have an average water footprint of 2480,m3/cap/yr, while China has an average footprint of 700,m3/cap/yr & #8230; (while) the global average water footprint is 1240,m3/cap/yr" (Hoekstra & Chapagain). When water usage rates of developing and industrialized nations are subjected to comparative analysis such as this, it becomes readily apparent that the world's water supply is quickly being usurped by a select group of superpowers. In this case, it is important to determine whether or not this disparity results from developing nations remaining unable to tap, filter and transfer their own groundwater, or industrialized nations clinging stubbornly to outmoded means. In order to accurately assess this issue, the proposed study intends to analyze water consumption rates within 12 nations, with six representing the industrialized world, and six representing the developing world. The objective of the study is to compare the prioritization of water within each subject group, while determining if industrialized nations can improve their own water usage habits by emulating those currently in place throughout the developing world. From taking fewer showers to using water-less toilets, there are several means and methods of reducing water consumption currently being employed by billions of humans, while Americans, Chinese, and other residents of industrialized nations manage their water supply inefficiently and ineffectively. By designing the study to reveal the efficacy of several water usage activities, and measuring this efficacy across the cultural boundaries which delineate the subject nations, one can accurately gauge the likelihood of America, China, Russia and other superpowers voluntarily reducing water consumption through alternative methods.