The stress on water scarcity can be gauge from the fact that 70% of the earth surface out of which only 3% is freshwater. 2/3rd of water is stored in glaciers and frozen lakes. Water scarcity is a condition when water is not available for consumption purpose easily. There are two types of water scarcity:
- Physical water scarcity: when natural source of water fails to fulfil the demand .
- Economic water scarcity: Scarcity due to poor management of water resource.
Earth is becoming water stressed due to following reasons:
- Growing population
- Overuse and misuse of water.
- Water guzzling practices in agriculture. According to economic survey, water use efficiency is just 40%.
- Water is not harvested to maximum potential. It lead to water mixing with ocean making it unusable.
- Sewage, Industries effluent are allow to mix with water without sludge treatment at Industrial level. It makes water unfit for consumption.
- Most of the new technology involved are water intensive like growing of biofuel crops, extracting coal bad methane and shale gas.
- Availability of water on earth is not in proportion to its demand.
- People don’t see water as scarce resource. There is insensitivity towards water as commodity.
Hence, there is a need for creating the ecosystem where water is treated as scarce commodity. Water footprint and water pricing can be a possible solution. Protection of water related ecosystem shall be accorded top priority. Without taking affirmative action achieving SDG-6 will be a daunting task.
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