"There Is No More to the World Water Crisis Than a Shoratge of Water" Discuss

Evaluate the following statement: ‘There is no more to the world water crisis than a shortage of water’

The world water crisis is in many ways the main threat facing all of humanity today. 3.4 million people die every year due to a water born disease, this is as much as to repopulate the whole of los Angeles. Over 780 million people in the world lack access to clean water and 99% of those live in the underdeveloped world. The water crisis kills more people per year than any armed conflicts. It kills the equivalent to a jumbo jet full of children every 4 hours. In this essay I will state my rejection of the essay title statement.

Africa is a region that suffers from extreme poverty and water scarcity. Predictions show that by 2025, 25 African states will face either water stress of scarcity. In Africa over 300 million lack access to clean safe water, worst affected are those in Sub Saharan Africa where nearly 51% of people lack a safe water supply and 41% lack adequate sanitation. However, this is not due to a shortage of water, however a lack of water distribution. An average of 500,000 cubic kilometres of rain falls in the world per year, on average that is around 1m of rain in each per year. That means that 5 quintillion litres of rain falls on the earth per year if you divide this by the 7 billion population of the world you get 714285714 litres per person per year (1956947 litres per day). This shows that there is no water scarcity within the world, just vastly uneven levels of distribution. The image below shows world water usage per capita by country. We see that in the USA water usage per inhabitant is 1,550m3 per year whereas in the DRC water usage per inhabitant is only 11.53m3 per year. This shows that there is no water scarcity, it just falls in the wrong place and too much is used by the wrong people. It is a commonly known fact that if the UK spent the £9bn that it cost them to hold the London 2012 Olympics could have given clean water to...