Water Scarcity In The Twenty-First Century

As we approach the 21st century, more than a quarter of the world's population or a third of the population in developing countries live in regions that will experience severe water scarcity. This paper reports on a study to project water supply and demand for 118 countries over the 1990-2025 period. The nature and geographic focus of growing water scarcity a re identified. In the semiarid regions of Asia and the Middle East, which include some of the major breadbaskets of the world, the groundwater table is falling at an alarming rate. There is an urgent need to focus the attention of both professionals and policy makers on the problems of groundwater depletion, which must be seen as the major threat to food security in the 21st century.