The headline seems outrageous and alarming at the same time; the first answer that many might give is a laugh. When one considers the value of water and the source of many historic conflicts, however, the question is anything but funny. Fresh water is second only to oxygen in terms of importance to human life and though our planet is covered by almost 1,400,000,000 km 3 of water, only 2.8% of that is fresh water, and of that, the vast majority is locked in the polar ice caps . The remaining 11 million km 3 sustains the entire population of Earth – over 6.5 billion humans and countless plants and animals.
Without drinking water, a human being can survive for approximately one week . Compare that need to the ‘need’ for oil, land or physical wealth – all sources for conflict in the 20th and 21st centuries. There are many in our world that do not possess great amounts of these commodities and, while that does make their lives decidedly more difficult, their lives continue and they manage to cope. Yet if the wealthy were denied water for one week, they would be dead or dying, despite their wealth. Read More
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