Impacts of Water Scarcity

The lack of fresh water can have far-reaching impacts on all living things – humans and animals alike.

1. Stifling Economic Development

Today, agriculture is responsible for 70% of all water consumption, followed by 20% for industry and 10% for domestic usage. In the face of water shortages, agricultural and industrial outputs will be affected, bringing about an overall negative impact on economic development. With declining economic performances, poor countries will not be able to raise the funds they need so desperately to solve their water-related problems.

Furthermore, diminishing agricultural outputs, especially in some African countries that are hardest hit by drought, will further aggravate their existing food crisis and increase the number of people dying from starvation.

2. Water-borne Diseases

Water scarcity has forced people to turn to unsafe sources of drinking water, which can lead to risk of diarrhoea, diseases as cholera, typhoid fever and dysentery, and other water-borne infections.

Water shortages have also caused people in poor communities to use wastewater for agricultural production causing people to fall ill as a result of the chemicals and disease-causing organisms in wastewater.

In addition, there are 2.5 billion people in the world who lack access to improved sanitation, amongst them, 1.2 billion people have no sanitation facilities. The lack of sanitation is the world’s biggest cause of infection and each year, as many as 5 million people, mostly children, die from preventable, water-borne diseases. Notably, this figure is 10 times the number of people killed in wars around the world!

The lack of proper sanitation infrastructure in many developing countries also means that sewage is discharged without being treated, thereby further polluting the rivers and lakes and leading to rapid decrease of drinkable water.

300 million people living in rural areas don’t have access to safe drinking water. The long term repercussions could be increased frequency of extreme droughts and flooding.

3. Geopolitical Instability

Former UN chief Boutros Boutros-Ghali said that the next Middle East war will be fought for water, not oil.

Indeed, the prospect of going to war over such an essential resource are not unlikely as “demographic pressures and water scarcity would be unprecedented in the coming decades”, especially in Asia, observed the Asia Society. Commenting on the situation in the region, it added, "The potential for conflicts sparked by the direct and indirect impacts of an increasingly volatile water supply should not be underestimated, particularly in the light of rising concerns about climate change".

4. Extinction of fauna and flora

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - a network of more than 2,500 scientists – has warned that up to 30% of animal and plant species will become extinct if global temperatures rise between 1.5 to 2.5 degrees.

Already, global warming and the increase in carbon dioxide levels has caused the oceans to gradually become more and more acid (oceans become more acid when they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere), which will cause the destruction of coral reefs, shellfish, plankton, and fish populations.