A close observer of the world’s condition today might be excused for being overwhelmed by a host of seemingly insoluble—or at least enormously challenging—problems and issues ranging from endless conflict in the Middle East and other parts of the world to global poverty and hunger to debates over the amounts and types of energy that humans need to survive and improve their lives to a variety of devastating diseases and medical conditions to the growing threat of global climate change to the mass movement of migrants and refugees in a variety of regions. Under such circumstances, it might be understandable that the observer would ignore a crisis affecting one of the simplest and most fundamental of all substances on the planet: water.
Yet, evidence begins to accumulate that humans are already facing a number of daunting challenges related to water scarcity and water stress, the lack to one degree or another of adequate supplies of clean water to meet even the simplest everyday domestic, agricultural, industrial, and other needs we face every day. Hardly a day goes by without new stories of water shortages in California or other parts of the American West, in the Middle East, in sub-Saharan Africa, and in southern Asia or reports of communities and nations facing the growing challenge of obtaining and delivering adequate quantities of safe water to their inhabitants.
Those individuals who live in developed nations may be somewhat surprised by growing concerns about a global water “crisis.” Yet, such a crisis is hardly a new phenomenon in human history. Droughts are, perhaps, the most dramatic example of conditions in which the very survival of individual humans and human communities is threatened, and droughts have been around as long as human history has existed. Disputes over water are also as old as the human race, with written stories ranging back more than 5,000 years to fights between nations over the use of water resources. Even today, many people who live in developed nations might be shocked to learn how many of their peers in developing nations may face a daily struggle to find enough clean water with which to wash, cook their meals, and clean themselves. Global water issues may seem like a new and strange problem to some of the world’s more prosperous communities, but it is a fact of life in billions of homes around the world today.
A number of factors are responsible for this problem, including a growing global population, increasing urbanization of most parts of the globe, competition among growing agricultural and industrial operations along with domestic needs, and, perhaps most important of all, increasingly obvious global climate changes. In addition to problems of quantity—obtaining adequate amounts of water—there are growing problems of quality—lack of access for hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people to adequate amounts of water to follow safe and sanitary handwashing and other disease-preventative practices.
Many national, regional, and international organizations, along with a host of general and special-interest nongovernmental organizations, are now launching vigorous campaigns to educate people about problems of water scarcity and WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) in almost every part of the world. These organizations are also creating and putting into practice a variety of active programs designed to solve problems of water shortages and lack of adequate WASH facilities and practice. Some progress has been made over the past two decades as a result of these programs, but far more needs to be done to ensure that the world’s population will have access to safe water for all human needs.
The Global Water Crisis is offered as a resource for young adults who would like to learn more about the topic and/or as a reference base for use in future research projects. The first two chapters of the book provide a comprehensive introduction to the topic of water supplies: a review of the amount and kind of water available on the planet’s physical environment; a summary of the history of some fundamental types of water technology, such as irrigation and dam-building, water treatment systems, and power production; a description of the growth of water law in its various forms; a detailed analysis of the current factors that contribute to the development of the world’s water crisis, such as population growth, urbanization, drought, and climate change; an explanation of the types of disputes that have and can continue to develop over water resources; and a description of the major factors involved in the concern over adequate access to water, sanitation, and adequate hygiene worldwide.
Each of the first two chapters is accompanied by reference sections which are included not only to identify the sources of information presented in a chapter, but also to help guide interested readers in finding and following up on useful resources on the topics discussed in each chapter. These references should be considered as research adjuncts to the extensive annotated bibliography provided in Chapter 6.
Chapter 3 is a popular feature of books in the Contemporary World Issues series in that it provides interested experts in the field with an opportunity to write brief essays about topics of special interest to them and, hopefully, to the reader. Chapter 4 offers biographical and descriptive essays about important individuals and organizations in the field of water, sanitation, hygiene, and related topics. Chapter 5 contains portions of important laws and legal cases dealing with water issues, as well as a number of data tables on water topics. The bibliography of Chapter 6 brings together useful books, articles, reports, and Internet sources dealing with a variety of water-related topics. Chapter 7 offers a chronological timeline of important events in the history of water, while the glossary consists of important terms used in a study of the subject.