Global Water Shortage

Water is certainly in short supply across the world from the driest continent of Australia to the richest underground fresh water supply of USA. BBC news depicts a very gloomy picture on world water crises or the near future. Some very critical locations are:

- Melbourne area due to the backfire to reverse the flow of Snow river scheme.
- China's Northern Plain is severely polluted, damaging health and limiting irrigation.
- The sacred Ganges Hindu River is depleted and said to contain high level of arsenic.
- Competition for short water supply from the River Jordan was a major cause of the 1967 war.
- A United Nations report predicts that access to water may be the single biggest cause of conflict and war in Africa in the next 25 years.
- Half the Nigeria population has no access to clean water, and as in much of Africa, many women walk for hours a day to fetch it.
- More than half of Europe's cities are exploiting groundwater at unsustainable rates. Chronic water shortages are already affecting 4.5m people in Catalonia.
- Ninety five percent of the United States' fresh water is underground. As farmers in the Texan High Plains pump groundwater faster than rain replenishes it, the water tables are depleting.

In 1962, China and Hong Kong went into a squabble that led China to cut off supply of water to Hong Kong. We were on water rationing of 1 hour tap water flow every other day for a few months. Singapore has a similar situation where fresh water supply is relied solely from the neighboring Malaysia.

But are these isolated cases of shortages represent a global shortage?

If we closely analyze the causes of the shortages around the world, we can see they can be categorized in 2 parts.

1. Miss-management of water supply.
A glance at the BBC report sees terms like back-fired scheme, severely polluted, un-acceptable levels of arsenic, exploiting groundwater at unsustainable rates or hazards of over pumping, etc. These are all human causes to the shortage and can be corrected.

2. Distribution problem
Other terms we see in the same BBC reports are access to water as biggest cause of conflict in Africa in the next 25 years, no access to clean water and water from the River Jordan was a major cause of the 1967 war.

But with technology and global environmental awareness, things should not be as bad as it seems. We can certainly develop a low-cost and environmental friendly solution to transport fresh water from places that have plenty to where there is a great need.

I read of a company that has developed a uniquely designed potable water transporting system to far away destination for ultra-low energy consumption. It will substantially reduce transportation cost of potable water from the plenty to the needy. The cost is substantially lower than desalination or reverse osmosis technique.

Such system will soon be deployed the Middle East, Southern California, South America, and Southeast Asia. These regions share the dramatic water shortages crises and welcome any affordable fresh water delivery.

This will not only solve water problem, it will hopefully remove the threat of war over water through fair and equitable distribution of water resource.

Thus, it leads to my conclusion that the water supply shortages is only sporadic, human causes, and containable. There is "NO" global water shortage as such.