This article is taken from World Energy (WE) number 46 – Water stories
Too little, too much and too polluted water: most countries suffer with one of these problems, and some have all three. For the tenth year in a row, the WEF Global Risks Report highlighted the water crisis as a top five risk in terms of impact. Yet over this time, the global water crisis has worsened— punctuated by apocalyptic stories of “Day Zero” (Cape Town, South Africa), pollution (Flint, Michigan, U.S.) and floods (Southeastern Africa). The 2018 UN Progress report on SDG6 concluded that the world is not on track to meet its water targets: hundreds of millions will still be without access to safe and reliable water supply and sanitation, demand for freshwater will outstrip supply and wastewaters will continue to pollute the environment in 2030.
What compounds this risk are the dependencies and impacts of water for big systems: food, energy and climate, for example. More food to feed a growing population requires more water, transitioning to a low-carbon economy has water use implications and the main means by which climate change impacts manifest is through floods and droughts. Yet despite this bleak outlook, there are opportunities, solutions and synergies to fix our water problems. If we can galvanize political will, create “water-coherency” across environmental, economic and social policies and establish fit-for-purpose water governance, we can unleash the finance, technology and institutions to fix our wicked water problems.