Water for consumption can come to an end

Water for consumption can come to an end, UN alerts
Seventy percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, in the biggest part it’s salt water and, so, it’s unfit for human consumption. Only 2.5% of total is potable and the biggest part of the reserves (about 80%) is concentrated in glaciers on the icecaps.
According to the UN (United Nations), 1.1 billion people lack access to treated water and about 1.5 million people die around the world every year because of health problems caused by the lack of this feature. The shortage can cause wars without precedent in the humanity history.
The shortage of this feature endangers the food production. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), 70% of the superficial and underground water is used in the agriculture. In 2003, UN declared the International Year of Freshwater to raise awareness about its importance and the necessity to use it by the right way.

With the theme “clean water for a healthy world”, UN highlights the water contamination on March 22, the World Water Day.

“The consumption growth is connected to the countries’ economic growth. How much bigger the GDP, the consumption will be bigger too” says Eduardo Mendiondo, of the Department of Hydraulics and Sanitation from UFSCar.

He works with a index called “hydrological footprint”, it measures the total annual water consumption per capita – including the water embedded on the products that we consume. He has made a calculation for the Brazil’s reality: “A Brazilian’s hydrological footprint is almost 1340 m³ per capita for year while an American hydrological footprint is 2500 m³ for year”
The calculation makes sense because, according to UN, the consumption in developed countries is about 6 times bigger than the consumption in countries underdeveloped.
Today, more than 1 billion people in the world don’t have access for a reliable water source. In 2025, the biggest part of the Earth is going to be in a