Water for the People: Drinking Water as a Scarce Resource

Drinking water is one of the scarcest and most valuable resources in the world. According to a study conducted by the WHO and UNICEF, around 1.1 billion people currently have no access to clean drinking water. By the year 2025, it is estimated that half of the world‘s population will lack access to clean drinking water.

Of course, these predictions apply in particular to developing and newly industrialized countries. So does that mean that the industrialized countries in the northern part of the globe can breathe a sigh of relief, the countries that have essentially always had enough water at their disposal? Unfortunately not: This apparent abundance of water is steadily being endangered by contamination with industrial and biological pollutants.

So what are the stringent requirements that water has to meet to be considered as drinking water? To be considered perfect, drinking water must be free from pathogens, have a neutral taste and color and contain a minimum concentration of minerals. All too frequently, water obtained from groundwater or surface water does not fulfill these stipulations. That is why physical or chemical methods must be employed to turn it into drinking water. Ensuring the availability of adequate amounts of clean water is set to be global issue number one in the future, and the market for the technologies required to process drinking water is one of the fastest-growing markets worldwide.

Drinking water reference projects