From the laws of demand and supply, when the demand for water exceeds the available resources of water, we will start to suffer from water scarcity. Water scarcity is fast becoming a serious issue all over the world Water may be needed in agriculture, domestic use, commercial use or even environmental use. A lot of people take the availability of water for granted and only come to realize of it when they start missing it. Despite the fact that the earth is 70% water, only a small portion of that percentage is usable 97.5% being salty water leaving only 2.5% as fresh water for use. This is again not all usable as 68.9% is locked in glaciers, 30.8% as ground water and 0.3% found in lakes and rivers.
A third of the worlds population is found in places where there isn’t enough water or the quality of the water there has been compromised. Although this is a big number, the number is still expected to rise to two thirds of the world population.
Water scarcity can either be
- Physical water scarcity – This is when there is no enough water to meet the needs of human
- Economic water scarcity – This occurs when human, institutional and financial capital limit access to water although water in nature is available for human needs.
Developing countries suffer more from water related problems and households spend a fortune of their income on water than families in industrialized countries. Water issues are everybody’s problems whether affected now directly or not as it will come to a time when we all get affected directly. We therefore should all consider mean and ways of conserving water the best way we can.
Villagers in Northern Uganda are made aware of water scarcity by NUDF. Although the organization helps in making clean water available to the villagers, it also educates them on how to conserve the water. Not only to the villagers in Northern Uganda but to everyone else, We all should try and conserve water the best way we can by doing little things that we may ignore but are very effective in the conservation process like; closing the tap when brushing our teeth or not purchasing what we do not need as everything produced uses water.