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The Nations That Will Be Hardest Hit By Water Shortages By 2040
merbs writes: Water access is going to be one of the most pressing issues of the 21st century. As climate change dries out the already dry areas and makes the wet ones wetter, we're poised to see some radical civilizational shifts. For one, a number of densely populated areas will come under serious water stress—which analysts fear will lead to strife, thirst, and even violent conflict. With that in mind, the World Resource Institute has assembled a new report projecting which nations are most likely to be hardest hit by water stress in coming decades—nations like Bahrain, Israel, Palestine, and Spain lead the pack.
I love how Alaska gets included with the rest of the nation even though we have nothing close to a water shortage with all the glaciers up here. We should have been grouped with Canada.
Any major change in rain patterns will likely cause water shortages in SOME places and water surpluses in others.The desert Southwest of the United States was probably fertile and green 700 years ago; after all, the Anasazi had a civilization of SOME sort then, and there hasn't been any water around in the last few hundred. Everything goes in cycles; don't expect that every change will be a bad one.
Weather *is* cyclical you know, and with climate change some places are going to be hit with even more aggressive patterns.
Or there could be other problems brewing. I'm not sure what the water table usage in Australia is, have you looked into it? It's one of those things that can be really bad when the water runs out but nobody thinks about because it's out of sight, out of mind. Just look at California - they've been drawing way more out of the aquifers than can possibly be replenished for decades and it's causing the actual ground to sink. One day not too far off those aquifers will be dry and then their entire agricultural sector will be screwed.
The most blatant corruption here are the so-called "free" trade agreements rammed down the throats of African nations (EU, I'm looking at you). They are killing local industries (just one example: they are swamped by cheap, disgusting leftovers from EU chicken industry because the "developed" nation's citizens can only stand breast and drumstick).
Water? The same: The likes of Nestlé and Veolia steal the water to re-sell it to the locals.
Now that's not to say that the local chiefs aren't corrupt -- but pointing at them from our "first world" couch totally misses the point.
Now excuse me, I'm going to barf.