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Water Scarcity

Decent Essays

Water scarcity is the lack of sufficient water sources in a country or a region. It can affect 2.8 billion people around the world one month out of a year. More than 1.2 billion people around the world lack access to clean drinking water.

According to the UN about 2.7 billion people across the globe will face water shortages by 2050 if changes aren’t put into place. That’s nearly ⅓ of the world’s population and on top of that 2.5 billion will find it hard to find enough freshwater to meet their daily needs.
As the driest inhabited continent, Australia is definitely not immune to this and must make some changes. So, how do people go about making changes and what are those changes?

Water scarcity can be caused by water pollution. Water pollution comes from many sources including pesticides and fertilizers that wash away from farms, untreated and untested human wastewater, and industrial waste. Even some groundwater isn’t safe from pollutants because they can leak through the ground to underground aquifers.

Another cause of water scarcity can be agriculture. Agriculture uses ~70% of the worlds freshwater, and still some 60% of this water is wasted due to leaking irrigation systems, bad methods of use and cultivation of crops that are too thirsty for where they are being grown. Also many countries that produce large amounts of food- including India, China, Australia, Spain and the United States- are getting close to their limits in terms of water resources. Added to the

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