A growing lack of fresh water

[sheldonstinson]

With the population growing in most countries, water has become tremendously more demanding. With over-populated countries, water shortages have contributed to poverty and hardship in countries such as Somalia, Israel, Nigeria, Haiti, etc whose governments cannot supply enough resources for its demanding populations. These water shortages have struck a sign of hopelessness to the countries suffering from a lack of water. There first instinct is to turn to a country known for their natural resources, such as Canada. Our first priority is assuring our own country has enough water to provide for the millions of people populating the country. We can’t give water to third world countries suffering from water shortages when our own country has a chance of having our own water crisis. Population growth will make the problem worse, as will climate change. As the global economy grows, so will their thirst and many other conflicts revolving around our planet are waiting to be resolved as well, similar to the shortage of water around the world. With raw sewage being dumped into lakes and rivers, it’s affecting our health and causing illnesses as well as affecting the fish living in these lakes and rivers. With water becoming contaminated it is taking more chemicals to purify it, causing diseases and illnesses. Haiti and the Dominican Republic are being hit by Cholera this disease is spread through contaminated water from sewage leaking into the clean water streams and individuals drinking the water, this is an outcome of lacking clean drinking water.

[Matthew Anderson]

I agree with you Sheldon there is a lot of evidence about the growing lack of fresh water. For many of the reasons you have listed: water supplies, pollution, droughts, populations. I do think though that there are many things we can do right now to ensure the world has access to fresh water. Here are some ideas, set up a world-wide governmental group of environmental researchers and lawyers to develop global fresh water policies. We could also set up systems in our homes for recycling water. For example, laundry, dish washing and bathing are considered "grey water" which simply means the water is clean enough to be re-used in our gardens and washing our cars. Grey water can be filtered so that we can re-use it to mop our floors and clean our homes.

As we all know currently all the fresh water and grey water that we use is transferred back to the rivers and lakes. I think this would impact the fresh water supply in the long term because it would no longer be fresh.

We need to think differently and act differently if we are to preserve our fresh water supply and make sure it is available to everyone throughout the world.

Better water filtration systems would help populations in developing countries. They could have access to clean water.