Water Scarcity Essay Example for Free

Water Scarcity Essay Water is essential because water can maintain the process of eco-system, supplies the agriculture and human cannot live without water. However, there is the increasing number of water issues are appearing in the modern world and issues tend to be serious, especially the supply of water. Although water scarcity is an issue which needs to be solved quickly but, water scarcity is not easy to be reduced and when the project failed, it may cause more problems can make problems worse than before. There are over 43 countries are suffering from water scarcity approximately (United Nations). It may cause a number of water-related problems: starvation, water security, and poverty. According to a report which was published from the IWMI (Barker, R et al 2000) has pointed out the water scarcity is growing. In the meantime, research also found out the some poverty areas usually has the problem of water scarcity, especially Africa (Barker, R et al 2000). Therefore, solve the water scarcity problem should be the priority for some drought countries all around the world. For instance, The United Nations is running a plan called The â€Å"WATER FOR LIFE DECADE†; the aim of this plan is to help some places where lack of water to face the challenges of water scarcity (FAO 2006). The programme is divided different levels: International Level, National Level and Local Level. At the same time, officers for this approach give advices local government or national institutions the for water-management policy-making, guidance of techniques (FAO 2006). Another method to reduce water scarcity is the national government makes a national policy to limit the use of water. When residents reach the limitation, the government can give a warning letter to them and make them pay fine. Although there are some methods may reduce water scarcity, some places may have difficulties to run those methods. Firstly, the government needs to spend a large number of money on water management, it is a big cost for some countries where do not have financial support. Such as, Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in South America; the unemployment rate has reached 12 per cent and nearly half of people are living in rural areas. Therefore, the project might face financial problems in poor countries. However, those people really need to find a way to out (Rural Poverty Portal 1993). Another difficulty to reduce water scarcity is technique problem. It is widely recognised that water management project really needs specialists as a guide to make the project has been processed successfully. Hence, although the government has enough financial support to process the water management programme, they do not have professional to guide them, the programme would be failure. For example, according to a literature from SIWI (Falkenmark, M et al. 2007), this report mentioned the improvement of coping with water scarcity, the workers as a guide to give suitable suggestions to local authority and encourage farmers to use the farming technology (Falkenmark, M et al. 2007). As can be seen that expert is a key to succeed the programme. As regards to the consequences of water management projects failure, the most obvious one is waste of money. According to news from ABC Environment Blog, there was a plan for Murray River in South Australia called the Murray-Darling Plan. This plan was set in Water ACT 2007, and cost over millions dollars and 300 officers. But the plan might not as good as expect: people seem do not like the Murray-Darling plan, even the scientists and farmers (Phillips, S 2012). It can be seen from this report; the result of the Murray-Darling plan is not as well as they say. However, the editor even predicted it may aggravate deforestation. Consequently, this event causes arguments about the Murray-Darling plan. At the same time, it may cause pollution waste from some facilities for environmental management. The main reason is that when workers misuse some chemical reagents to the water, it can cause the water pollution and water eutrophication. Another example is the Indian government cost more than Rs 300 thousands crore to build dams over major rivers in 1950s. But it does not work, the river drought and a large number of money have been wasted (Chauhan, C 2013).