01.07.19
600 million people facing acute water shortage in India.
India is battling a brutal heatwave that has killed more than 130 people this summer. The heatwave is exacerbating an already alarming reality - with more than 600 million people facing an acute water shortage. The world's second-most populous country is running out of water. Huge number of people across India are on the front lines of a nationwide water crisis. A total of 21 major cities are poised to run out of groundwater next year, according to a 2018 report by government-run think tank NITI Aayog. Groundwater, which has been steadily depleting for years, makes up 40% of the country's water supply. But other sources are also running dry -- almost two-thirds of India's reservoirs are running below normal water levels, the country's Central Water Commission said in June. According to a UN human rights report, the world is fast approaching a "climate apartheid" where only the wealthy can afford basic resources in the face of fatal droughts, famine and heatwaves. Hundreds of thousands of residents wait in line each day to fill their pots at government water tankers, and critical services like hospitals and schools are struggling. People are forced to wash utensils in the same dirty water, saving a few bottles of clean water to cook food. This may be a glimpse of wider India's future as the water crisis spreads. Already, 600 million people are facing acute water shortages nationwide -- and 200,000 die each year from inadequate or unsafe water supplies. Credit: NOW THIS
Poverty deprives people of adequate education, health care and of life's most basic necessities- safe living conditions (including clean air and clean drinking water) and an adequate food supply. The developed (industrialized) countries today account for roughly 20 percent of the world's population but control about 80 percent of the world's wealth.
Poverty and pollution seem to operate in a vicious cycle that, so far, has been hard to break. Even in the developed nations, the gap between the rich and the poor is evident in their respective social and environmental conditions.
Poverty and pollution seem to operate in a vicious cycle that, so far, has been hard to break. Even in the developed nations, the gap between the rich and the poor is evident in their respective social and environmental conditions.
