Who would have thought that water, as abundant as it is on this planet, would be a crisis today?
While water makes up 71% of the Earth surface, they consist of mostly salty water (97%) in the oceans and are not consumable by human. The 3% fresh water are Earth surface trapped (think rivers, lakes, and ice caps) [source].
And out of the 3% fresh water, about 31% is accessible for human. Which is less than 1% of the total volume of water on Earth if you work out the numbers (source). Less than 1% for the entire human race: any wonder why clean fresh water is a limited, precious resource?
Then we caused climate change and its domino impact on the water cycle. Which results an imbalanced system. Our climate is now more extreme and less stable with drought, flood, and storm increasing in intensity and frequency.
Thus, our water crisis stems from global warming. What the future holds is difficult to predict. But one thing certain, we must preserve this precious resource for human survival. Will it be desalination, waste water reclamation, or other conservation measures?
What do you think will happen to our water crisis?
Running with Buddha 