ABSTRACT
When the environmental state of our ‘Blue Planet’ is painted, it almost exclusively comes out dark and gloomy. What can be expected in a situation where 1 billion people are without proper drinking water and 3 billion people lack adequate sanitation? On top of this we are faced with large-scale impacts of human mismanagement, resulting in severe water-quality deterioration, groundwater decline, human-induced drying-up of rivers, and loss of immense ecological values from drained wetlands and regulated waterways. As if this was not enough, there will be 3 billion more mouths to feed in 2050, and an incredible 800 million currently undernourished people to raise from a life of nutritional misery to a minimum quality of life. Producing food is by far the world’s largest direct water-consuming activity, where each human meal corresponds to between 1000 and 2000 litres of water just to sustain the plant growth forming the base for all human terrestrial caloric intakes. This enormous food-induced human pressure on water resources will occur, moreover, in developing, predominantly tropical, countries – 95 per cent of the population growth occurs here.
