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The Scarcity of Water Essay

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The procurability of potable water per capita is scarce and is currently diminishing worldwide. Scientific surveys estimate that the Earth’s surface is relatively seventy-one percent water and twenty-nine percent land. Unfortunately, a substantial amount of the seventy-one percent of water is salty and non-potable. Only about one percent of the available seventy-one percent can only be utilized for human consumption, without requiring initial desalinization. It has been predicted by the United Nations that due to population growth and various other factors that the average person’s water supply will be limited by a third over the next twenty years. Strategists allege that future wars will be waged over water because it is the most crucial …show more content…

Factors that provide to the production of goods and services include entrepreneurship, labor, capital, and land-including water and other natural resources. As a result of the scarcity of water, some cities and water suppliers can take advantage of the situation by afflicting excessive prices for it due to the natural ramification of a shortage in economics. A shortage, which implies that the market price is below equilibrium, is resolved through higher prices. The higher price would promote profit-maximizing suppliers to increase quantity supplied. The higher price would also discourage waste and encourage conservation, thereby reducing quantity demanded. Ultimately, if market forces were able to resolve water scarcity, an equilibrium price and quantity would be reached. However, putting a high price on water could cause it to simply redistribute from the conserving poor to the wasteful wealthy. This will severely limit water away from the places where it is most beneficial to society as a whole. Since market forces are not able to completely resolve the problem, I believe that government and private sector intervention might be required as well.
One solution is to enact aggressive water conservation programs. For example, the local water authority could pay homeowners to rip out their lawn and replace it with desert-friendly landscaping. Doing this would reduce the amount of water required by our lawns by providing an incentive

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