Water Scarcity
Problem
In the Holy Quran, water is
mentioned in it where in translation means “And made from water everything
alive”. Water covers 71% of the earth’s surface and from that high percent,
only 2.5% of it is fresh water and from that percentage only less than 0.3% is
fresh water that can be found in lakes and rivers whereas the rest of it are in
ice and underground. In the 20th century water business came to life
as some businessmen and business entities came to realize that water suitable
for use is getting lower and lower, in that they sought a business opportunity
to invest in a natural resource and made it into a commodity. In another word,
fresh water is limited and it will as well as other natural resources run out,
solutions must be brainstormed, assessed, chosen and implemented to prevent future catastrophes
that might not affect life forms in the meantime but will have severe consciences
in the near or late future.
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Causes
A lot of people pointed the fingers
at bad personal habits when the problem was realized, but that was not the
major cause of the problem when at the same time the economy had divided water
usage when only 10% was going to the municipality and that only was good to use
as drinking water, 20% was going to industry and a whopping 70% to irrigation
and that is a really high percentage. Another major cause is the major increase
in population and the world’s population has increased by one billion from 1999
to 2011and is still increasing. China is the highest in population and next is
India and that has forced China to have the one-child policy or family planning
policy where the Chinese government will support you if you only have one
child, the government has gone to extreme measures for this policy just to
control population. Another issue is the desalination plant that made water
into a business which made a lot of businessmen and business entities to go to
this business for the huge amount of profit they make.
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Solution
China
took a huge step to control population and it went to the extreme to do it and
it worked for them but I don’t think an extreme like that would work around the
world, a policy like that should be implemented but not as strong as the policy
in China but a less strict policy would put the world in a strategy of
population control. Another solution would be dividing the usage of water
because a lot of it is in irrigation and that 70% is keeping the world full and
not hungry but a solution for it is connected in desalination. The International
Desalination Association is an organization that is associated with the
desalination business; a global entity should be formed that governments,
businessman and women and people of the public can join for an effort to
increase its business and the number of desalination plants around the world
will increase and that will make profit in billions where it will bringing more
people when they see the benefits in it. Using the desalinated water in
agriculture should be in a certain percentage to make it efficient and
effective as well as less than 70% which is the current usage; making some
mandatory changes can have a dramatic effect such as drip irrigating, a system
like that will have a huge change in agriculture and it will make the usage go
way below 70% if made mandatory around the world. Bad personal habits can be
changed but that takes a lot of changes and amendments for the actions to have
an effect; one solution is making a certain percentage of water usage for free
but the rest will be charged and that will make people a little bit wiser when
using water; making some mandatory changes when building a house like
installing sensors in the bathroom faucet as well as installing sprinklers in
them and that will make the usages lower in one house but if it became
worldwide it will have a dramatic effect. A step must be taken by someone and
the rest of the world will follow afterwards; this problem might not affect
this generation or the next one or the one after but eventually it will have catastrophic
effect on a lot of people and nations might even go to war over water.
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