What exactly is water-stress? Water stress occurs when the ecological or human demand for water is not met. This can be as a result of various factors, including lack of rainfall, the natural aridity of the area or climate change. Unfortunately though, poor investment in water Infrastructure, poor management of local resources and pipelines and pollution also play a part.

Water stress affects around 2.7 billion people across the globe for at least one month of every year. It is also becoming direr in cities due to the rapid growth of the urban population. There are currently approximately four billion people live in cities, and this figure is predicted to rise to around 6.5 billion by 2050.

Approximately 860 million people live in slums around the world, and like all other settlements that are not connected to a formal piped water supply, the lack of access to clean water and hygienic sanitation carries with it enormous health consequences.

What is needed is forward-thinking governments that are willing to invest in water infrastructure and go the extra mile to ensure that even though their country may have little rain, measures are put in place to gather more water by various novel methods and to ensure that they maintain infrastructure so that no water is lost due to leaking pipes or taps.

Rural populations where there is as yet no piped water supply can be taught to put up large nets that capture the rain that there is as well as the moisture in fog and direct it downwards to containers. Governments should invest in desalination plants in those areas that are near oceans, and can also enter in partnerships with neighbouring countries where water is more plentiful.

Citizens should be made aware of the value of water and water-usage should be restricted; not only in times of drought but as a matter of course. Information and training on how to conserve water and how to recycle water should be easily accessible, and governments should encourage, even offer rebates to people to invest in rainwater tanks which they can use for irrigation purposes, and even for personal use after boiling it to sanitise it.

There should, by rights not be such a thing as water-stress, even where there has been drought for years; it mostly comes down to good management, and the people need to be taught how to manage their water supplies, as governments cannot do it all.

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