Half of world population to struggle for water in 2050

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Half of the population in the world may have to live withoutaccess to their minimum requirement for water by the year 2050. In 2000, 50crore people in the world were chronically short of fresh water out of a totalpopulation of six billion with the growing demand for fresh water due to risein population, increased urbanization and industrial development.

“Indiaand other developing countries are the worst suffers of fresh water crisismainly because of comparatively lack of better planning to manage theirrespective fresh water reserves both on the surface and in the aquifers. Freshwater shortage in Indiais becoming more and more acute. The per capita water availability in Indiaduring the period 1951– 2001 has declined from 5177 liters to 1820 litersper year and it would further decrease to 1140 liters by 2050”, formerdirector general of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research [CSIR] andcurrently, chairman, Institute of Advance Technology and Environmental Studies (IATES )), P. K. Jena on Monday told “The ET”.

The country has got only 2.45% of world’s landmass supporting nearly 16%of the world’s population. But it has a meager 4% of world’s freshwater resource. “In recent years, the rapid development of mineral basedindustries in various regions of India has led to the contaminatedfresh water, which is consumed by people posing threat to their livelihood aswell as health. Some of the important factors responsible for polluting thesurface as well as the ground water in India are poor land use practices,direct pollutant discharges in to water bodies and atmospheric deposition ofthe pollutants”, Mr Jena remarked.

The Padmashree awardee scientist attributed shortage of water supply to shortcircuiting of the water cycle. “Massive deforestation and environmentaldegradation often reduce the ability of the land to provide suitable quantitiesof fresh water to our growing population and the industries. In mine areas,there are a number of sources of water including mine pits, streams and rivers.These water sources get polluted due to various activities such as removal ofvegetation as well as top and sub soil, drilling and blasting, stock piling theminerals, overburden etc. The mine water has to be properly purified beforebeing used for different purposes”, he added.

Indian rivers are getting much shallower and are not able to contain enoughwater to sustain the demands of various sectors; because of this most of thefarmers depend on the ground water for their agricultural as well as domesticpurposes. The ground water label in most part of the country is getting fastdepleted, he said expressing concern.

“Some 50 years ago in northern Gujurat, the farmers use to get water fromthe dug wells of about 30 - 40 feet depth whereas now, tube wells aresunk even up to 1300 feet, but still these get dried up because of heavy waterextraction without any artificial recharging of the aquifers. In recent years,most of the traditional dug wells and millions of bore wells have dried up acrossWestern India. Nearly 63% of Tamil Nadu havealready dried up resulting in nearly 50% decreasing in the capacity ofirrigation facilities”, he said.

As most of the rural India is under water stress., Mr Jena suggested forsystematic planning and implementation of an integrated water managementprogramme for Rural India involving areas like rain water harvesting,artificial recharge of aquifer with rain water, developing wet lands, waterconservation in irrigation and agricultural productions, keeping the pollutantaway from water bodies and providing drinking water to all.

Arguing for sustainable development, Mr Jena underscored the need forprotecting the environment of the mine area in all respects. “Themanagement of water resources in the mine area including harvesting therainwater is very essential. The mine owners in both private and public sectorsshould undertake the mine water management with all sincerity so that the waterscarcity and pollution problems can be avoided to a great extent and it wouldbe possible to get the best out of the resources available in thecountry”.
Source - Economic Times