What are the causes of shortage of water? What countries have a shortage of water? Water scarcity is the lack of sufficient available water resources to meet the demands of water usage within a region.
It already affects every continent and around 2. Only of the world’s water is fresh water , and two-thirds of that is tucked away in frozen glaciers or otherwise unavailable for our use.
Water shortages are pushing many regions to the brink of crisis and may lead to future conflicts and even wars. Water scarcity or water crisis or water shortage is the deficiency of adequate water resources that can meet the water demands for a particular region. Whenever there is a lack of access to potable and fresh water for drinking and sanitation, the situation means that the water is scarce.
It is manifested by partial or no satisfaction of expressed deman economic competition for water quantity or quality, disputes between users, irreversible depletion of groundwater, and negative impacts on the environment. The effects of water scarcity can be grouped into these broad areas— Health, Hunger, Education, and Poverty. In many developing countries, people are forced to drink low quality water from flowing streams, many of which are contaminated.