Taps in India to go dry in 20 years

Chennai:

Water demand in India and China -- the world's two most populous countries - will exceed supplies in less than 20 years, according to a report The Global Water Crisis: Addressing an Urgent Security Issue.



The report which is to be launched on September 11 jointly by the InterAction Council (IAC), a group of 40 prominent former government leaders and heads of state, together with the United Nations University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health, and Canada's Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation, states that this will be mostly due to due to population growth, increasing irrigation for food production, and growth in GDP.



“The strain on the world’s agricultural and industrial sectors will be substantial, as India and China’s populations move towards middle-class diets and consumption patterns. The lack of available water will be compounded by issues of water quality,” the study states.



The report states that approximately 3,800 cubic kilometers of fresh water is extracted from aquatic ecosystems globally every year. “With about 1 billion more mouths to feed worldwide by 2025, global agriculture alone will require another 1,000 cubic km (1 trillion cubic meters) of water per year - equal to the annual flow of 20 Niles or 100 Colorado Rivers,” the report says.



Stating water will be the oil of future, the report states 145 countries and 40 per cent of global population fall within

263 international river basins that account for 60 per cent of global river flow as such the chances for violent conflict are abundant; yet tensions over water seem to stimulate cooperation rather than promote conflict.



The report predicts that venues of the world's water-related businesses are forecasted to rise from $522 billion in 2007 to nearly $1 trillion by 2020. The challenge to meet rising water demands presents myriad challenges in many key areas including: upgrading current water infrastructure and rethinking the infrastructure of the future; maximizing the water efficiency of industrial processes; treating wastewater as a resource; enhancing water productivity in agriculture and using information technology for more effective water management.