ABSTRACT

Much is said about the need for the global community to reduce its carbon footprint but mankind needs to address another ecological imbalance, its ‘water footprint’. One third of the world’s population must contend with severe water shortage and twice that number has no sanitation. With a rise in global temperatures of 4°C expected this century there will be 3 billion people facing severe water shortages by 2100 (UNEP, 2009). The combination of scarcity and bad management of water affects food supplies, health, education, nature and economic development. It means women spend long periods collecting it, families spend up to half their daily income on it, farmers lose their land, and infants die of dehydration.