The Project Area Water

Abstract

Water is scarce! Only a few years ago, water was regarded — at least in many regions of the world — as a inexhaustible resource. This might, at first sight, appear to be a correct assumption. In actual fact, though, freshwater accounts for only 2.5% of earth’s total water resources — and even this small amount is unevenly distributed across the world and constantly declining. Today, there are already some two billion people without access to clean drinking water, and experts are agreed that this number will continue to grow as the world’s population increases. The water available to these people — whose provision normally involves considerable effort — is in most cases highly contaminated. Supplying the world’s population with sufficiently clean drinking water is — besides providing adequate food supplies — currently regarded as the major problem facing mankind, a problem that wars are likely be waged over.