{"id":65543,"date":"2023-07-23T06:07:04","date_gmt":"2023-07-23T11:07:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=65543"},"modified":"2023-07-23T06:07:04","modified_gmt":"2023-07-23T11:07:04","slug":"understanding-the-global-supply-of-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=65543","title":{"rendered":"Understanding The Global Supply Of Water"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Understanding The Global Supply Of Water<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
\n
\n

As the world\u2019s population and its agricultural needs have grown, so too has the demand for water, putting the world\u2019s supply of water under the microscope.<\/p>\n

A century ago, freshwater consumption was six times lower than in modern times.<\/strong>\u00a0This increase in demand and usage has resulted in\u00a0rising stress<\/a>\u00a0on freshwater resources and further depletion of reservoirs.<\/p>\n

Visual Capitalist’s Freny Fernandez introduces this graphic by\u00a0Chesca Kirkland<\/a>\u00a0– using insights from\u00a0Our World in Data<\/a>\u00a0– to break down water supply and also withdrawals per capita. The latter measures the quantity of water taken from both groundwater and freshwater sources for agricultural, industrial, or domestic use.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/picture><\/a><\/p>\n

How Much Water Do We Have?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many people know that more than 70% of the\u00a0Earth\u2019s surface<\/a>\u00a0is water. That\u2019s 326 million trillion gallons of water, yet humanity still faces a tight supply. Why is that?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s because\u00a097%<\/strong>\u00a0of this water is saline and unfit for consumption. Of the remaining\u00a03%<\/strong>\u00a0of freshwater, about two-thirds are\u00a0locked away<\/a>\u00a0in the form of snow, glaciers, and polar ice caps. Meanwhile, just under a third of freshwater is found in fast-depleting\u00a0groundwater<\/a>\u00a0resources.<\/p>\n

That leaves just\u00a01% of global freshwater<\/strong>\u00a0as \u201ceasily\u201d sourced supply from rainfall as well as freshwater reservoirs including rivers and lakes.<\/p>\n

Per Capita Water Withdrawals<\/strong><\/p>\n

Any look at a\u00a0world map of rivers<\/a>\u00a0and lakes will reveal that fresh water distribution is highly uneven across different regions of the world.<\/p>\n

Yet developed and developing countries alike require a lot of water for both commercial and personal use. Agriculture use alone accounts for an estimated 70% of the world\u2019s available freshwater.<\/p>\n

Below we can see how water withdrawals per capita have grown over the past decades, using the latest available data from each.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Understanding The Global Supply Of Water As the world\u2019s population and its agricultural needs have grown, so too has the demand for water, putting the world\u2019s supply of water under the microscope. A century ago, freshwater consumption was six times lower than in modern times.\u00a0This increase in demand and usage has resulted in\u00a0rising stress\u00a0on freshwater […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[33882,866,4120,4318],"class_list":["post-65543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-global-water-supplies","tag-water","tag-water-supply","tag-zerohedge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65544,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65543\/revisions\/65544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}