The Shortage of Fresh Clean Water

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What the Ancient Mariner expressed in frustration when they found themselves becalmed in the middle of ocean, as I understand it, running out of drinking water. But in this poem, what he said almost two centuries ago is certainly has relevance in real life today. The one of the most serious threats to humanity over the coming decades is the shortage of fresh clean water. Nowadays the earth is still rich in seawater, but fresh water is not. The global situation is less than 3% of the world’s water is fresh, the rest of them is seawater and undrinkable. So, the 7 billion population of the world must rely on this 0.5% of freshwater for all of man’s and ecosystem’s needs because of other 2.5% are frozen.

Source: Water Business Council for Sustainable Development (Fry, 2006)

With the global population is projected to increase about 9 billion by 2050, the World Bank forecasts the two-third of global population will run short of fresh drinking water by 2025. (Network, 2012). This means the water usage growing at more than twice the rate of global population growth. Scarcity of drinking ...

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