Two big factors in the survival of humans in our overpopulated world are the availability of clean freshwater and basic sanitation, toilets. Right now we're desperately short of both. It's a sad fact that, in the Third World, more people have cell phones than have access to a toilet, even a pit toilet.
When it comes to clean, safe freshwater, the situation is equally dire and it's about to get a lot worse very soon.
About 800 million people world-wide will experience absolute water scarcity while two-third of the world’s population would also face severe water crisis by 2025. Besides, 1.1 billion people would be deprived of clean drinking water.
This is what water scarcity currently looks like:
This is what it's projected to look like in 2025.
It doesn't look good for North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia or a good part of China for that matter. Some of the hardest hit nations are nuclear powers: Israel, Pakistan, India and China, the latter three of which all have competing demands for the Himalayan headwaters.
What makes the problem more difficult is that these water-stressed regions include the regions that have the greatest need for basic sanitation. Water and sanitation are inextricably linked. When clean water is not to be found, people will drink contaminated filth water. When water is in short supply, what is available is not wasted on sanitation. Perfect conditions for outbreaks of dysentery, cholera, typhoid, polio and a host of other contagions.
It will be a real test of the blue countries, the northern hemisphere nations, whether they will make the sacrifices needed to come to the aid of the populations of the red and yellow countries and, if they do, which ones.
The worst case scenario, it seems, would be for the north to pull up the drawbridges and allow the south to depopulate. Bear in mind that we are in uncharted territory. Many of the impacted countries will be dangerously destabilized. What a mess.
