by Kodjo Adadevoh

Created on: March 19, 2010

The World Health Organization estimates that a third of the world’s population lacks enough water to meet their daily needs. The scarcity of water creates inadequate sanitary conditions for 2.5 billion people. Water scarcity forces many populations to rely on unsafe sources for their daily needs which include drinking, cooking and bathing. The lack of fresh water in many parts of the world leads to disease outbreaks such as cholera, typhoid fever, trachoma, shigella, polio, meningitis, hepatitis A and E, plague and typhus. Eighty percent of the illnesses in developing countries are linked to poor water supply and hence poor sanitation conditions. 

Only 2.5% of the water on earth is fresh water and less than 1% is available or can be accesses. Most of the water is trapped in glaciers and ice caps. Even though the amount of fresh water on earth has remained the same for thousands of years, the world’s population continues to increase and demands for water continue to increase each year.  Most developing countries get their freshwater supplies from seasonal rains. As a consequence of the seasonal nature of the rainfall, many countries can utilize only about 20% of their available freshwater supply. Many ideas have been put forth to remedy the short supply of fresh water, several of these ideas are already being implemented, though at different rates in different countries.

Desalination is often considered to be one of the more promising solutions for the world's water crisis; 97% of the water on earth is in the oceans.  Desalination plants are expense to build and maintain due to their huge capital costs (five times the cost to purify water from conventional sources), huge energy requirements, transportation costs from the plants to the end user and the costs to remove process waste. The more common desalination options that exist today including reverse osmosis, distillation, geothermal and solar desalination plants. 

Desalination is currently being used in some parts of the world where few other options exist for fresh water, such as parts of North Africa and the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is at the forefront with 70% of its drinking water coming from desalination plants. There is no doubt that on a longer term basis, the technology and cost of desalination will drop which will make desalination a lot more affordable and viable than it is today. 

Agriculture accounts for 70% of the water consumed in developing countries. A

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