WATER AGAIN

No-one on Earth has ever died from a lack of water; approximately 70% of the world’s surface is covered by water, 97.5% of that is salt water, 68.7% of the 2.5% that is freshwater is frozen in ice caps and glaciers, 1% of the total water resources on earth are available for human use without some form of pre-treatment, nearly all water on Earth has the potential to become potable water.

To qualify the above seemingly rash statement – people are dying from a lack of drinking water where they happen to be which on a humanitarian level means that they’re not worth the expenditure of getting it to them or being basic, too many people are being born in areas that cannot sustain them.

If you live in a wealthy nation such as the United States, *South Africa or Australia, drought need not be fatal and generally has a far less impact on the country’s ability to grow crops. 75% of the world’s fresh water is used in farming. 15% of the world’s wheat comes from Australia (645 million tons globally) 38% of the world’s tomatoes are grown in California (10 million tons) 20-30% of the world’s food supply comes from the U.S.

*World drought maps show all three of the above countries as being historically drought areas yet all three also appear on the world’s barley big hitters although South Africa and South African Development Countries are seeing declining production per capita even though total food production has increased - due to population growth.

*South Africa is now actually realising crop shortages – potentially their worst in 30 years after a disastrous wheat crop in the eastern part of the Free State grain belt – typically 27% of income is spent by South African consumers on food compared to 9% of income spent by U.S. consumers on food, 11% of income spent by U.K. consumers on food and 53% of income spent by Indian consumers on food.

The wealthier your nation, the more water you can have; the UAE is the home of the world’s largest desalination plant at Jebel Ali which produces 5.7 million cubic metres of potable water per week. Combined with pipeline technology such as employed on the Druzhba pipeline (oil) we have the ability to pump over 7,000 cubic metres per hour over distances in excess of 4,000 kilometres.

Since I first blogged about water I’ve become fascinated by the subject. One commodity that this planet does not lack is water; there is more than enough for every African, Australian, American, Arab, European and Indian. As previously pointed out, the energy consumption required by desalination simply reduces the argument to one of profit and loss – is it worth it?

If you want a torch to work – put a battery in it. If you don’t want it to work because it’s not you who will be using it (Aid), then don’t, but let’s not pretend there’s a world water shortage – there isn’t.

None of the above ‘facts’ have been made up by me. All of the above ‘facts’ are taken from googling ‘world food percentages’ and ‘world hunger percentages’ and ‘water availability’