Water is a critically important nutrient for plants and animals. The world's water supplies are extremely unevenly distributed - and many plants and animals are in a near-constant state of partial dehydration. It is estimated that that 1 billion people in the world don’t have access to clean water. In Africa and Asia women walk an average of 6km a day just to collect water for their families. In many cases, the water is not even safe: impure water and lack of basic sanitation causes 80% of all sickness and disease, and kills more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Contributing towards ways of redistributing clean water is probably the single most significant way of improving the world, in terms of the scale of the resulting improvements per unit invested. Water charities estimate that in some areas of the developing world it costs an estimated £1 to supply water to a child for nearly ten years [source] and that just over £10 will supply someone with safe water for life [source].
Failure to irrigate can create deserts in some regions - uninhabitable wastelands. Technology to improve the situation has several fronts:
Links |
