Now a days fresh water is global issue for whole world. All because of the causes you ask? What steps should you take with the government or yourself to resolve the problem? Why or why not? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

Now a days fresh water is global issue for whole world. All because of the causes you ask? What steps should you take with the government or yourself to resolve the problem? Why or why not? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

The availability of clean, safe freshwater is one of the most basic needs for human existence and societal functioning; however, the global freshwater crisis has emerged as a key environmental and humanitarian issue throughout the 21st century. Recognising the interrelated factors behind this crisis and determining how best to respond — at the level of states, institutions and civil society is a serious analytical challenge that deserves urgent attention.

There are few issues more complex than global freshwater scarcity; and there are many overlapping and interlocking factors. Of these, population growth may be the most structurally important — as the population of the earth has increased dramatically in recent decades, so has both total demand and effective uses of freshwater for household, agricultural and industrial use only marginally had a commensurate increase, putting increasing stress on aquifers, river systems and reservoirs which have fixed natural replenishment times. Almost seventy per cent of all freshwater is used by agriculture and the growth of irrigated cultivation to feed fast expanding populations has drained groundwater resources at many major agricultural regions — parts of India, China, and the American prairie states — have seen depletion rates that far exceed rates of natural recharge creating conditions of long term unsustainability that will become increasingly important in coming decades.

Climate change is a driver of freshwater scarcity, no less serious perhaps than population and poverty, but it works in several ways all at once. Changes in precipitation are disrupting the orderly occurrence of rainfall that agricultural and municipal water systems rely on, while accelerating glacial melt threatens to undermine long-term security of the seasonal meltwater flows that provide freshwater to hundreds of millions across South Asia and Central Asia. Higher evaporation rates caused by rising temperatures decrease the amount of water that actually can be used, even when the amounts from precipitation do not change. Extreme weather event — extended droughts and heavy flooding — are becoming more common, leading to cycles of extreme scarcity with poisoning floods that threaten the security of water already in places that have traditionally enjoyed bountiful supplies.

The problem of industrial and agricultural pollution is another form of the crisis adding on to physical scarcity with quality degradation. Even if total volume of water is sufficient, it may actually be unavailable for human use because contaminated by agricultural chemical runoff, industrial effluent, untreated sewage and pharmaceutical residues in rivers, lakes and aquifers (i.e. unsuitable as drinking water). The Ganges, Yangtze and many other large river systems upon which hundreds of millions of people depend are glaring examples of how extreme this quality dimension of water scarcity can become when legal regimes are ineffective or ineffectively enforced.

Solving the water crisis – freshwater, in this case – requires actors at government and individual levels engaged across the entire spectrum of demand reduction, supply-side protection, and quality management.

However, what are the principal instruments of structural intervention and where do they predominantly reside? Reforming agricultural water subsidies, which in many countries currently encourage wasteful over-irrigation by supplying water at below-market prices, may be amongst the biggest single-impact policy reform possible: they could immediately reduce freshwater use — estimated to account for two thirds of global consumption — while spurring even more widespread adoption of water-saving technologies such as drip systems. Water reuse and desalination infrastructure, although expensive and energy-consuming, is a form of supply expansion that will decrease demand on natural freshwater systems that are becoming more over-stressed. Robust regulatory systems that regulate industrial effluents, the use of agricultural chemicals and urban sewage treatment are important for safeguarding the quality of existing freshwater stocks. International cooperation frameworks — equitable and enforceable agreements for the management of shared river basins and transboundary aquifers — are becoming more essential as intensifying geopolitical competition over access to shared resources drives the risk of water scarcity.

Direct action at the individual level is absolutely possible and achievable through impactful behaviour changes delivered at scale. Limiting meat (specifically, beef) consumption is one of the most effective dietary options individuals have to reduce their virtual water footprint because cows consume vastly more water per kilogram of food than any plant-based foodstuff. Domestic practices—such as installing water-saving home appliances, promptly fixing leaks, and harvesting rainwater for use in the garden—are feasible and economically reasonable ways to reduce consumption. The incentives in the market that steer corporate behaviours in water-intensive sectors arise from consumer choice for products manufactured by companies with proven credentials on stewardship of this critical resource.

As a last point, the combination of population growth, climate change, agricultural inefficiency and pollution causes the global freshwater crisis that cannot be solved only through structural government intervention but also through significant individual behavioural change. The challenge is extremely serious, but so too the options for response, and there has never been a time in history with a greater need to implement them.