Water in the World: local and global challenges
When looking objectively at how drinking water and wastewater is handled across countries, a depressing picture emerges. Continuous inaction has already created massive problems for millions of people. And how does the future look?
Water has a huge impact on the health and quality of life, on energy consumption and on our climate. In other words, on all of the underlying problems that have led to the UN Sustainable Development Goal #6: “Clean water and sanitation for all”.
As part of AVK’s effort to contribute to this goal, we have published a booklet about water management across the globe. The booklet explains how the current ways of managing water affects areas such as water scarcity, pollution, health, energy consumption and financials, as well as how our water access is affected by ie climate, overexploitation, the food industry etc. We want to create awareness, and at the same time set the scene for a dialogue about all the competencies and solutions that are just waiting to be implemented.
Are you updated on the water situation, and ready to join the dialogue?
Today, we are wasting the water for tomorrow
In many places in the world, water is a scarce resource. Despite this, worldwide between 35% and 40% of the water we gain and produce from different sources is wasted. More than a third of the produced drinking water never reaches the end user:
"Water loss is the worst – it is a waste of an often-sparse resource and also of the resources (energy, labour and write-off of infrastructure) used to extract the water.” - Bjørn Kaare Jensen, former VC, Danish Water Forum, President, European Water Association
Poor quality water costs millions of lives every year, and is a massive burden on healthcare. Meeting the goals of proper drinking water and sanitation can save 10% on healthcare globally.
We use a lot of energy for no reason
With 35-40% lost water, this means that a third of the energy used in the production and distribution of water is wasted too. The global water industry uses approximately 120 MTOE every year - roughly corresponding to the combined energy consumption of Australia.
”We can shut down all coal-fired power plants in the EU from one day to the next if we implement the knowledge and technology at our disposal today.” - Lars Schrøder, former Director, Århus Vand
..and this is just the current status.
"Where are we 10 years from now? Just as many of the populations worldwide, the current water scarcity issue will grow exponentially in the decades to come. We have a supply-demand deficit. Populations are growing and growing up. The standard of living is increasing.” - Dr. Kalanithy Vairavamoorthy, Executive Director, IWA
Want to learn more? Download your own copy of the booklet below (PDF).
