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If you think the war for oil is bad, wait till you see the war for water. The world is going water-bankrupt, according to a UN report published in January. Globally, humans are using water at a faster rate than nature can replenish it through rain or snow.
It may seem paradoxical. More than 70 per cent of the Earth is covered by water. However, a mere three per cent of that figure is fresh water. It gets even more startling. Of the percentage of fresh water, nearly 69 per cent is locked away in glaciers and ice caps, while roughly 30 per cent is groundwater. That leaves just one per cent accessible through lakes and rivers.
The possibility of a water war was first discussed on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS programme in 2015. “Water is not a resource that you need to enhance your life. It is something that you need to survive. To me, that is something that is very easy to lead to significant conflict,” Dr Ronald Roopnarine said in an interview with the Sunday Guardian last week.
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