Water scarcity

About: Water scarcity is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 11579 publications have been published within this topic receiving 228756 citations. The topic is also known as: water shortage.

Global Water Transfer Megaprojects: A Potential Solution for the Water-Food-Energy Nexus?

Abstract: Globally, freshwater is unevenly distributed, both in space and time. Climate change, land use alteration, and increasing human exploitation will further increase the pressure on water as a resource for human welfare and on inland water ecosystems. Water transfer megaprojects (WTMP) are defined here as large-scale engineering interventions to divert water within and between river basins that meet one of the following criteria: construction costs > USD 1 billion, distance of transfer > 190 km, or volume of water transferred exceeds 0.23 km3 per year. WTMP represent an engineered solution to cope with water scarcity. These projects are most commonly associated with large-scale agricultural and energy development schemes, and many of them serve multiple purposes. Despite numerous case studies that focus on the social, economic and environmental impacts of individual water transfer megaprojects, a global inventory of existing, planned and proposed projects is lacking. We carried out the first comprehensive global inventory of WTMP that are planned, proposed or under construction. We collected key information (e.g. location, distance, volume, costs, purpose) on 34 existing and 76 future (planned, proposed or under construction) WTMP. If realized, the total volume of water transferred by future projects will reach 1,910 km3 per year with a total transfer distance of more than twice the length of the Earth’s equator. The largest future WTMP are located in North America, Asia and Africa and the predicted total investment will exceed 2.7 trillion US$. Among future projects, 42 are for agricultural development, 13 for hydropower development and 10 combine both purposes. Future megaprojects are also planned to support mining, ecosystem restoration and navigation. Our results underscore the extent to which humans have and are planning to re-engineer the global hydrological network and flows through WTMP, creating a network of “artificial rivers”. They emphasize the need to ensure the inclusion of these projects in global and basin hydrological models, and to develop internationally agreed criteria to assess the ecological, social and economic impacts of WTMP.

Suffering from water: social origins of bodily distress in a Mexican community.

Abstract: This article is an ethnographic analysis of what it means to "suffer from water." Using a critical medical anthropology approach, the study examines how residents living in a foothill community of the Valley of Mexico experience bodily distress associated with water scarcity. Data for the study come from participant-observation of domestic water use and community drinking water management as well as interviews with local civil and religious officials who monitor the water distribution system. While the community discourse on suffering from water does not correspond to biomedical categories of illness, it does speak to the physical and emotional hardships and the social conditions that limit residents' access to an adequate supply of domestic water. By taking a broad view of water-related suffering, the study reveals some of the efforts made by people to address what they consider to be the social origins of their bodily distress.