Water Resource Management

Why Water Is Unevenly Shared

Although Earth’s surface is mostly water, only about 2.5% of it is fresh, and most of that is locked in glaciers or buried underground. The amount of freshwater a country can actually use depends on rainfall, geology and the technology to capture and clean it. The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Iceland have so much water they barely measure it; Saudi Arabia, parts of north Africa and inland Australia have almost none. Around 2 billion people live in countries where water demand exceeds reliable supply.

How Demand Has Changed in 50 Years

Global water use has roughly doubled since 1975. Three drivers explain almost all of it. Population growth — the world has gone from 4 billion to over 8 billion — means more drinking, washing and sanitation. Rising affluence brings power showers, dishwashers, swimming pools and meat-heavy diets that need huge volumes of water to grow grain for livestock. Industrialisation in countries such as China and India has raised factory and power-station demand sharply. Meanwhile, supply has not kept pace: aquifers are being pumped faster than rain replaces them, and climate change is lengthening dry seasons in regions that were already short.

Who Uses What — Developed vs Developing

Globally, agricultural water use takes about 70% of all freshwater. But the share differs sharply by income. In developing and emerging countries (e.g. India, Pakistan, Egypt) farming can take 80–90% of water because irrigation is essential to feed growing populations and food exports earn foreign currency. Industry and domestic use are small in comparison. In developed countries (e.g. the UK, Germany), domestic use rises to around 20% and industry to 30–40%, while farming falls to roughly 10% because food is often imported. So a wealthy household uses far more water at home, but a developing country uses far more in total because of irrigation.

Water Problems in Emerging & Developing Countries

In poorer countries the issue is rarely just rainfall. Many people lack access to treated water: in 2023 around 2.2 billion people had no safely managed drinking water at home. Rivers are often polluted by untreated sewage, factory waste or fertiliser run-off — the Yamuna in Delhi and the Ganges below Kanpur are textbook cases. Annual rainfall can also be low or unreliable: the Sahel has seen rainfall fall by around 20% since 1970. The result is widespread waterborne disease — cholera, typhoid and diarrhoea kill around 500,000 children under five each year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.

Stakeholders Disagree About Water

Stakeholders rarely share the same view. Individuals tend to want cheap, plentiful water on demand and resent meters or hosepipe bans. Farmers and businesses push for licences to abstract from rivers and aquifers. Water companies — private in England, public elsewhere — have to balance shareholder profit, fines for leaks and pressure to invest in new pipes. Environmental groups argue rivers need a minimum flow for fish and wetlands. Governments set the rules, and may face the political cost of price rises or hosepipe bans. The hosepipe bans across southern England in 2022 and Cape Town’s 2018 ‘Day Zero’ crisis both showed how quickly stakeholder conflict erupts when supply tightens.

Technology: Desalination & Beyond

Desalination turns seawater into freshwater by reverse osmosis or by boiling and condensing. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates rely on desalination for over half of their drinking water; Israel covers around 85% of household demand from five Mediterranean plants. The advantage is unlimited raw material — the sea. The drawbacks are heavy energy use (so often fossil-fuel-powered), salty brine discharged back into coastal waters, and high upfront cost. London’s Beckton plant, opened in 2010, was built as an emergency back-up rather than everyday supply for these reasons.