Introduction

Water is the basic need of life and one of the core elements of sustainability of living beings on planet earth. We have learnt since our childhood that 70 percent of earth surface is covered by water. However, the dilemma is, this large mass of water is not fit for human consumption and agricultural purposes. We are only available with 1 percent of fresh water resources to fulfill our drinking and other farming needs.

Now, I want to divert the focus of my readers towards the Population explosion aspect that we are facing for the past 2-3 decades. Population on the globe has increased at an exponential rate. There has been a dramatic escalation of population graph line if you plot years and population number on a graph as shown below.

Source: United Nations World Population Prospects

The above graph is quite self-explanatory that how we are expanding. Within a century, we have added almost 5 billion people and in coming 2-3 decade, we will be around 9 billion. This fast phase population explosion is on the other hand exerting pressure on the limited resources of the earth. Similarly, food demand is on a high and it will get increase in future as we are adding more mouths to our food basket.  

Now when we link the water availability situation with population, a dark picture came out as a result. As stated earlier, we are bestowed with only one 1 percent fresh water resources by the nature and this resource is limited. On top of it, we are also wasting water criminally in domestic and agricultural purposes, thus creating a difficult situation for our coming generations. Water resources are also facing another pressure from the changing climate. Changing rainfall and temperature patterns due to climate change are affecting negatively on water resources.

Widening Gap of Water Demand and Population

Over the years, because of the factors discussed in previous lines, per capital water availability of water has reduced. In some parts of the world, it has crossed the red line. There is a Widening Gap between the water demand and population as presented in graph below.

Source:  http://igeogers.weebly.com

The reason for which I build the case so far is that the changing dynamics of water, climate and population needs new and innovative measures to tackle in order to have sustainability in all forms of life, especially in agriculture. Out of the box approach is needed to address all the issues.

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