Water Resource

Water Resource

Introduction

As you know, fresh water is essential to life. We use it all the time sometimes even without realizing it.

Moreover, with the global warming: water became a market which gained more and more important in the world.  So, in this presentation we are going to see in a first part the use of water around the world, then in a second part why is it a limited resource which led to our third part why is it a source of conflict?

I- The use of water in the world

More than a drink, water is used for many things else. The uses of water are very diverse. Agriculture is the economic sector that takes the most water 70% of the fresh water. Then, industries consume 20% and urban and domestic consumption use 10%.  For example: to feed an animal (1000L/1kg) or to grow agricol productions. The need of meat doesn’t stop to raise each year. Inevitably, intensive use of water for agriculture makes water supplies more fragile.

to understand that, let's look at the map: published by the World Resources Institute, it shows projections of water stress for the planet in 2040. It is a projection of the future. It ranks the country from light yellow which mean that the ratio of withdrawal supply is less than 10% in the country to red dark which mean that the ratio of withdrawal supply is extremely high (over than 80%). We can see that countries in red dark are mostly located in the Middle east and the Maghreb unlike the light-yellow south of America and the middle of Africa. Moreover, in red there are the USA, the east of Asia and Australia. This means that businesses, farms, and communities in these countries in particular may be more vulnerable to scarcity than they are today.

This projection shows that we need more and more water and it’s going to be a limited resource.

II- Water, a limited resource

Indeed, we can’t find this resource everywhere but where do we take the water from? The second document, named “Distribution of Earth’s Water” and published in 1993, shows 3 bar charts which give us information about the location of the water we use everyday. It’s striking to see that we use only 2,5% of the water on the earth. This proportion of the fresh water is incredibly small compared to the total water. Only 2.5% for 96% of Oceans. Then, all the fresh water is not accessible on Earth; for example, 68.6% of the drinking water is composed of glaciers and ice caps.

Thanks to this document, we learn that water that are exploited are precipitation water, surface water and groundwater which show how hard it is to collect it.

That’s why it became a source of conflict.

III – Water, a source of conflict

As we have seen previously, water is a rare and covet resource.

In fact:

On Earth, a population explosion is taking place: There was more than 6.5 billion inhabitants in 2005 and the scientists predict 11 billion inhabitants in 2100.

The amount of water on earth stay always the same but the number of inhabitants continues to grow…

Today, on a global scale, men take about 3800 km of fresh water every year for their different uses! And as it is a common resource between countries, it can lead to wars if everyone does not share their resources and does not reduce their consumption.

For example, the Aral Sea situated in central Asia was fed by several rivers. But after the division of the USSR, rivalries took place. In fact, the rivers that fed the sea were diverted to feed the cotton fields. There is a multitude of conflicts like this in the world (Egypt, the Middle east)

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