Water resources are natural resources of water that are potentially useful for humans. For example, they serve as a source of drinking water or irrigation water. These resources may consist of freshwater from natural sources or water produced artificially from other sources, such as reclaimed water (wastewater) or desalinated water (seawater). Approximately 97% of the water on Earth is salt water, and only 3% is fresh water; slightly over two-thirds of this is frozen in glaciers and polar ice caps. The remaining unfrozen freshwater is found mainly as groundwater, with only a small fraction present above ground or in the air. Natural sources of fresh water include frozen water, groundwater, surface water, and under river flow. People use water resources for agricultural, household, and industrial activities.
Water resources are under threat from multiple issues. There is water scarcity, water pollution, water conflict, and climate change. Fresh water is in principle a renewable resource. However, the world's supply of groundwater is steadily decreasing. Groundwater depletion (or overdrafting) is occurring for example in Asia, South America and North America.
Natural sources of fresh water
Natural sources of fresh water include surface water, under river flow, groundwater and frozen water.
Surface water
Surface water refers to water that is found on the surface of the Earth. This includes but not limited to river, lake, ponds or fresh water wetland. Surface water is naturally replenished by precipitation, and naturally lost through discharge to the oceans, evaporation, evapotranspiration, drought, climate change, population growth, deforestation, land degradation, and groundwater recharge. The only natural input to any surface water system is precipitation within its watershed. The total quantity of water in that system at any given time is also dependent on many other factors. These factors include storage capacity in lakes, wetlands and artificial reservoirs, the permeability of the soil beneath these storage bodies, the runoff characteristics of the land in the watershed, the timing of the precipitation and local evaporation rates. Furthermore, other human factors such as temperature, climate change, topography, Vegetation cover, windspeed, relative humidity, and solar radiation has an effect on water loss. All of these factors also affect the proportions of water loss.
Humans often increase storage capacity by constructing reservoirs, rainwater harvesting systems, Managed Aquifier Recharge (MAR), Watershed Conservation, Construction of retention, and detention basins, floodplain restoration, creation of artificial rains; and decrease it by draining wetlands, land reclamation, urbanisation, river channelisation, over-abstraction of water, sedimentation by deforestation and poor reservoir management . Humans often increase runoff quantities and velocities by paving areas and channelizing the stream flow.
Natural surface water can be augmented by importing surface water from another watershed through a canal or pipeline. Other methods also includes rain harvesting, construction of dams and reservoirs, desalination, cloud seeding, and artificial recharge.
Brazil is estimated to have the largest supply of fresh water in the world with 5,661 billion m³/year followed by Russia, and Canada, with about 4,312 billion m³/year and 2,850 billion m³/year respectively according to rècent World Bank summaries. However, this is renewable freshwater and not freshwater physically stored in lakes,groundwater or glaciers.
Water from glaciers
Glacier runoff is considered to be surface water. The Himalayas, which are often called "The Roof of the World", contain some of the most extensive and rough high altitude areas on Earth as well as the greatest area of glaciers and permafrost outside of the poles. Ten of Asia's largest rivers flow from there, and more than a billion people's livelihoods depend on them. To complicate matters, temperatures there are rising more rapidly than the global average. In Nepal, the temperature has risen by 0.6 degrees Celsius over the last decade, whereas globally, the Earth has warmed approximately 0.7 degrees Celsius over the last hundred years.
Groundwater
Under river flow
Throughout the course of a river, the total volume of water transported downstream will often be a combination of the visible free water flow together with a substantial contribution flowing through rocks and sediments that underlie the river and its floodplain called the hyporheic zone. For many rivers in large valleys, this unseen component of flow may greatly exceed the visible flow. The hyporheic zone often forms a dynamic interface between surface water and groundwater from aquifers, exchanging flow between rivers and aquifers that may be fully charged or depleted. This is especially significant in karst areas where pot-holes and underground rivers are common.
Artificial sources of usable water
This refers to structured systems designed by humans for the collection, storage, treatment, and the convertion of water for human use. The purpose of this system is to help mitigate the shortage of water especially in regions where there is little to no rainfall or high demand of water. There are several artificial sources of fresh water; treated wastewater (reclaimed water), atmospheric water generators and Desalinated seawater. Other important sources includes: rainwater harvesting systems, wells, and boreholes, artificial recharge ponds, dams and reservoirs. It is important to consider the economic and environmental side effects of these technologies.
Wastewater reuse
Desalinated water
Research into other options
Researchers proposed air capture over oceans which would "significantly increasing freshwater through the capture of humid air over oceans" to address present and, especially, future water scarcity/insecurity.
A 2021 study proposed hypothetical portable solar-powered atmospheric water harvesting devices. However, such off-the-grid generation may sometimes "undermine efforts to develop permanent piped infrastructure" among other problems.
Water uses
The total quantity of water available at any given time is an important consideration. Some human water users have an intermittent need for water. For example, many farms require large quantities of water in the spring, and no water at all in the winter. Other users have a continuous need for water, such as a power plant that requires water for cooling. Over the long term the average rate of precipitation within a watershed is the upper bound for average consumption of natural surface water from that watershed.
Agriculture and other irrigation
Industries
It is estimated that 22% of worldwide water is used in industry. Major industrial users include hydroelectric dams, thermoelectric power plants, which use water for cooling, ore and oil refineries, which use water in chemical processes, and manufacturing plants, which use water as a solvent. Water withdrawal can be very high for certain industries, but consumption is generally much lower than that of agriculture.
Water is used in renewable power generation. Hydroelectric power derives energy from the force of water flowing downhill, driving a turbine connected to a generator. This hydroelectricity is a low-cost, non-polluting, renewable energy source. Significantly, hydroelectric power can also be used for load following unlike most renewable energy sources which are intermittent. Ultimately, the energy in a hydroelectric power plant is supplied by the sun. Heat from the sun evaporates water, which condenses as rain in higher altitudes and flows downhill. Pumped-storage hydroelectric plants also exist, which use grid electricity to pump water uphill when demand is low, and use the stored water to produce electricity when demand is high.
Thermoelectric power plants using cooling towers have high consumption, nearly equal to their withdrawal, as most of the withdrawn water is evaporated as part of the cooling process. The withdrawal, however, is lower than in once-through cooling systems.
Water is also used in many large scale industrial processes, such as thermoelectric power production, oil refining, fertilizer production and other chemical plant use, and natural gas extraction from shale rock. Discharge of untreated water from industrial uses is pollution. Pollution includes discharged solutes and increased water temperature (thermal pollution).
Drinking water and domestic use (households)
It is estimated that 8% of worldwide water use is for domestic purposes. These include drinking water, bathing, cooking, toilet flushing, cleaning, laundry and gardening. Basic domestic water requirements have been estimated by Peter Gleick at around 50 liters per person per day, excluding water for gardens.
Drinking water is water that is of sufficiently high quality so that it can be consumed or used without risk of immediate or long term harm. Such water is commonly called potable water. In most developed countries, the water supplied to domestic, commerce and industry is all of drinking water standard even though only a very small proportion is actually consumed or used in food preparation.
844 million people still lacked even a basic drinking water service in 2017. Of those, 159 million people worldwide drink water directly from surface water sources, such as lakes and streams. One in eight people in the world do not have access to safe water. Unsafe drinking water leads to 1.2 million deaths per year according to the World Bank.
Challenges and threats
Water scarcity
Water pollution
Water conflict
Climate change
Groundwater overdrafting
The world's supply of groundwater is steadily decreasing. Groundwater depletion (or overdrafting) is occurring for example in Asia, South America and North America. It is still unclear how much natural renewal balances this usage, and whether ecosystems are threatened.
Water resource management
Water resource management is the activity of planning, developing, distributing and managing the optimum use of water resources. It is an aspect of water cycle management. The field of water resources management will have to continue to adapt to the current and future issues facing the allocation of water. With the growing uncertainties of global climate change and the long-term impacts of past management actions, this decision-making will be even more difficult. It is likely that ongoing climate change will lead to situations that have not been encountered. As a result, alternative management strategies, including participatory approaches and adaptive capacity are increasingly being used to strengthen water decision-making.
Ideally, water resource management planning has regard to all the competing demands for water and seeks to allocate water on an equitable basis to satisfy all uses and demands. As with other resource management, this is rarely possible in practice so decision-makers must prioritise issues of sustainability, equity and factor optimisation (in that order!) to achieve acceptable outcomes. One of the biggest concerns for water-based resources in the future is the sustainability of the current and future water resource allocation.
Sustainable Development Goal 6 has a target related to water resources management: "Target 6.5: By 2030, implement integrated water resources management at all levels, including through transboundary cooperation as appropriate."
Sustainable water management
At present, only about 0.08 percent of all the world's fresh water is accessible. And there is ever-increasing demand for drinking, manufacturing, leisure and agriculture. Due to the small percentage of water available, optimizing the fresh water we have left from natural resources has been a growing challenge around the world.
Much effort in water resource management is directed at optimizing the use of water and in minimizing the environmental impact of water use on the natural environment. The observation of water as an integral part of the ecosystem is based on integrated water resources management, based on the 1992 Dublin Principles (see below).
Sustainable water management requires a holistic approach based on the principles of Integrated Water Resource Management, originally articulated in 1992 at the Dublin (January) and Rio (July) conferences. The four Dublin Principles, promulgated in the Dublin Statement are:
Fresh water is a finite and vulnerable resource, essential to sustain life, development and the environment;
Water development and management should be based on a participatory approach, involving users, planners and policy-makers at all levels;
Women play a central part in the provision, management and safeguarding of water;
Water has an economic value in all its competing uses and should be recognized as an economic good.
Implementation of these principles has guided reform of national water management law around the world since 1992.
Further challenges to sustainable and equitable water resources management include the fact that many water bodies are shared across boundaries which may be international (see water conflict) or intra-national (see Murray-Darling basin).
Integrated water resources management
Integrated water resources management (IWRM) has been defined by the Global Water Partnership (GWP) as "a process which promotes the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources, in order to maximize the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems".
Some scholars say that IWRM is complementary to water security because water security is a goal or destination, whilst IWRM is the process necessary to achieve that goal.
IWRM is a paradigm that emerged at international conferences in the late 1900s and early 2000s, although participatory water management institutions have existed for centuries. Discussions on a holistic way of managing water resources began already in the 1950s leading up to the 1977 United Nations Water Conference. The development of IWRM was particularly recommended in the final statement of the ministers at the International Conference on Water and the Environment in 1992, known as the Dublin Statement. This concept aims to promote changes in practices which are considered fundamental to improved water resource management. IWRM was a topic of the second World Water Forum, which was attended by a more varied group of stakeholders than the preceding conferences and contributed to the creation of the GWP.
In the International Water Association definition, IWRM rests upon three principles that together act as the overall framework:
Social equity: ensuring equal access for all users (particularly marginalized and poorer user groups) to an adequate quantity and quality of water necessary to sustain human well-being.