Impacts of Water Insecurity
Geography: AQA GCSE, topic 6.3.4
What are the Impacts of Water Insecurity?
Waterborne diseases, pollution, lower food production, lower industrial output, and potentially war can happen as a result of water insecurity.
Waterborne diseases and water pollution
- If there is not enough clean water to drink in a country, then people are more likely to drink dirty water.
- Water can be dirty because of pathogens in the water or because of chemicals in the water (polluted water).
- Cholera and typhoid are examples of waterborne diseases.
- Cholera kills between 21,000 and 143,000 people each year.
- A lack of clean water kills.
Reduced food production
- If there is not enough water in a country to water (irrigate) farms, then a country's food production will fall.
- For high-yielding crops, doubling the amount of water that crops receive can increase cereal/crop production from 1,000kg/hectare to 7,000kg/hectare.
- In 1998, 20% of the world's farmland was irrigated, but it produced 40% of all crops.
- A lack of water for irrigation can cause starvation and famine in a country.
Reduced industrial output
- Manufacturing and energy production require water.
- In the USA, 10% of water consumption is used to produce energy.
- If a country does not have enough water, then it may not be able to produce enough electricity to power the country and factories may have to shut down.
Potential for conflict
- When countries fight over access to water sources, we call it 'water conflict'.
- Wars in Sudan and over the Jordan River (Israel vs Syria/Jordan/Lebanon) have been because of water.
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What are the negative impacts of water insecurity?