It is said that wars in the 21st century will be fought over water. Do you agree? What do you think can be done now to alleviate

Water, covering 71 percent of Earth’s surface, gives our planet its distinctive blue hue when seen from space. Yet for all that water, an astonishing small amount is available for human use and the situation will be getting worse over the coming decades.

 

First of all, global warming will increase both evaporation and precipitation. Since there will be regional variations in rainfall, droughts may become more frequent in different regions at different times. In the next place, there will be an inevitable population growth with most of it in developing countries that already suffer water stress, which means water demand will increase dramatically by the end of this century. What is more, modernization ranging from industrialization to services such as tourism and entertainment continues to expand rapidly. This expansion requires increased water services including both supply and sanitation, which can lead to more pressure on water resources.

 

Many measures can be taken to alleviate the problems mentioned above. Firstly, the lion’s share of the water we use goes to irrigation. Therefore huge gains in water supply can be achieved simply by reducing the waste in irrigated agriculture. Besides, industrial and other economic activities draw less than a third of the water consumption, so wastewater recycling and reusing is another obvious response to water shortages. Moreover, the rest water we consume accounts for all common household uses, most of which are low quality uses, such as watering lawns and flushing toilets. Thus we could conserve water through improving the efficiency of water recycling.

 

In a word, we must change our attitudes internally to realize the urgent situation of water scarcity and make great efforts to alleviate this viral problem, or one day even taking a sip of water will be a luxury.