Washington, D.C. March 17, 1999 One third of the world's population will experience severe water scarcity within the next 25 years according to a new study by a leading global water organization. The study, which is the first to look at the complete cycle of use and reuse of the world's fresh water, finds that the water sources that supply the world's wells, lakes, and rivers are disappearing.
The study was conducted by the International Water Management Institute, a research center of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), and appears in the March issue of the International Journal of Water Resources Development, a leading refereed journal on issues of global water resources. It is being released jointly with Future Harvest, a CGIAR-sponsored organization that educates the public about the links between global peace, the environment, and agriculture.
"Water scarcity is now the single greatest threat to human health, the environment, and the global food supply," said David Seckler, director general of the Water Institute and an author of the study with Randolph Barker and Upali Amarasinghe. "It also threatens global peace as countries in Asia and the Middle East seek to cope with shortages."
The study, Water Scarcity in the Twenty-First Century, projects water supply and demand for 118 countries over the 19902025 period. The study examines on a country-by-country basis not only how much water is withdrawn by the four major sectors that use water‹agriculture, industry, households, and the environment‹but also how much water remains to be used and how much returns to the ground to "recharge" aquifers. In recent years, as more water has been used to support growing populations in each of these sectors, there has been less water available to recharge groundwater supplies ...
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