THE MOST SEVER THREAT WE FACE TODAY IS WATER SHORTAGE,DISCUSS - Essay Example

Instead, it signifies the increasingly growing problem of lack of potable water supply for the inhabitants of the world. With the sources of clean water dwindling and becoming harder to come by with each passing day, a severe water shortage in the future, possibly towards the middle of this current century, is seen by many experts as the most severe threat that we face as a member of the world population today. With our ever ballooning world population, our society is currently facing a problem in terms of finding and developing sustainable water sources that can help extend the current life cycle of our water sources.

Climate change is fast drying up the liquid that can be found in our usual supply points such as rivers and oceans. It is believed that the worlds biggest rivers -- the Ganges Indus Brahmaputra, Yangtze Mekong, Salween, and Yellow rivers may be totally dried up by the year 2035. Such an event will have a direct effect on the world's biggest continent and could very well cause a chain reaction of natural calamities such as wild fires, hunger and famine, social conflict, war, and diseases 1. Global warming has turned our water supply situation into a terrifying reality that in the United States alone, the data sheets indicate that more than one third of the countries in the lower 48 will have to deal with a water supply shortage by mid century.

This while more than 400 other countries will also have to deal with the international water supply shortage caused by global warming 2 (NRDC “Climate Change, Water and Risk”). Recent studies by the United Nations have clearly indicated that the water supply shortage that our world is currently experiencing has directly affected the lives of more than 1.2 billion people, approximately a fifth of the world's population 3 (United Nations “International Decade for Action 'Water for Life' 2005-2015”).

This dire situation has become a reality due to the fact that there are quite a number of countries that lack the necessary abilities with which to be able to harness the water streaming directly from rivers and aquifers. There has been a notable increase in the need for water in the 21st century stemming from agricultural needs for food to construction requirements for the building of homes and other necessary infrastructure for the survival of mankind. These heavy water requirements of our population has led to the twofold increase in the water requirements of the world's population.

That is why although the world wide water shortage does not exist at the moment, there are still parts of the world that find themselves constantly lacking in water supply for their region. Keeping in mind the aforementioned facts about the way that we as a society use our existing water supply, it becomes easier to understand the causes of the water supply that we experience at one point or another in our lives. As human beings, we have begun to take our water supply for granted simply because we were told that our planet of composed mostly of water.

It became a logical conclusion for us that since our planet is composed of 80 percent bodies of water at the very least, then we would not run out of water to supply our life sustaining requirements. Man has abused the water supply