some water scarcity statistics

OK so what have we established so far?? ok well what I hope to have established is that there is enough  freshwater on the planet for 7 billion people but its is just the distribution which is uneven added with the fact that too much of it is wasted, polluted and unsustainably managed. So freshwater scarcity is both a factor of climate change and human influence. Now for some statistical facts I'v picked up along the way so you get the feel that this is an urgent relevant topic:

• Water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century

• although there is no global water scarcity as such, an increasing number of regions are chronically short of water.

• Water scarcity already affects every continent.

• Around 780 million people in 43 countries lack access to clean water that is more than 2 .5 times the population of the US.

• Another 1.6 billion people, or almost one quarter of the world's population, face economic water shortage (where countries lack the necessary infrastructure to take water from rivers and aquifers).UN, 2007  

• By 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity( <500 cubic meters per person er year) , and two-thirds of the world's population could be living under water stressed conditions ( < 1700 cubic meters per person per year) .

• With the existing climate change scenario, almost half the world's population will be living in areas of high water stress by 2030

• In addition, water scarcity in some arid and semi-arid places will displace between 24 million and 700 million people.UNDP, 2006

Now the next blog will be focused on the part of the world which has the largest number of water stressed countries of any region. Have a guess???

   SUB SAHARAN AFRICA!