Chapter 1 (Beyond Scarcity)

U.N. seeks G8 aid in water crisis

The United Nations is urging the G8 to establish a strategy to resolve the world’s lack of water. Africa is a country suffering from the outcome of the sanitation crisis and deficit of water. Africans could have prevented 1.8 million children from death, if they had clean water and toilets. In addition, 443 million school days were lost to the same unsanitary sickness. Overall, the global water crisis causes the deaths of nearly 2 million children every year. It also holds back countries' development, especially in Africa. This crisis contributes to a lost of 5 percent of GDP annually for the African governments, which is more than the various countries receives in aid. Shockingly, unclean water is an immeasurably greater threat to human security than violent conflict during civil war.

This environmental issue is not only happening in Africa. In the near future, Canada will also be sailing on the same sinking ship because each Canadian uses approximately 7100 litres of water a day. Currently, the severe outcomes of a water shortage has not affected Canada. Nonetheless, Canada has 14 percent of the world’s lakes and 9 percent of the world’s river flow which only one percent of the world’s population have access to. Canadian water resources are going to be exhausted as we continue to match the demand for water with the available supply. There’s a high demand for water in Canada apart from needing water to drink. Canadians are accustom to the unrealistic luxury of unlimited water supply for their modern conveniences. Major changes must be made into Canadians' lifestyles because the world is dealing with inadequate water supply and sustainable development must be implemented.

In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, water is at the level of survival. Everyone needs water to live and their country to flourish. Without water, a population is unable to function properly and has to deal with millions of deaths and various social issues. Before Africans can face the violence in their countries, they need water to survive. Water is a scarce resource that needs to be preserving immediately or there will be opportunity costs involved. Our world is operated around the economy, so the answer to providing water supply is primarily financial. Money has to be taken away from other uses in order to ensure that we maintain an adequate water resource because presently water is a fixed resource that has increasing amounts of variables. All in all, the law of diminishing returns states that our water supply will eventually become smaller and smaller.

Please think about Sustainable Development!!!