Figure: Global map charts locations that use more water than is available in at least one month each year.
Mesfin Mekonnen and Arjen Hoekstra at the University of Twente in the Netherlands have created maps that show global water scarcity on a monthly timescale. They identify areas, where more water is withdrawn than the region can sustainably support for at least one month per year. More than four billion people, more than half the world’s population, live in such areas. And slightly under four billion live in areas of “severe water scarcity”, where twice as much water is withdrawn as is sustainably available for at least one month per year. That compares with between 1.7 and 3.1 billion people identified in global assessments that were accounted on annual bases.
Read the article here: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/2/e1500323.full
Four billion people facing severe water scarcity
BY MESFIN M. MEKONNEN, ARJEN Y. HOEKSTRA
SCIENCE ADVANCES12 FEB 2016 : E1500323
Source: ‘Water scarcity’ affects four billion people each year : Nature News & Comment
