Severe water shortage by 2005 likely: Reports

Agencies, Vienna/Bangkok

More than 2.7 billion people will face severe shortages of fresh water by 2025 if the world keeps consuming water at today's rates, the United Nations warned Friday in a new report to mark World Water Day.

Worldwide, about 5 billion people will be living in areas where it will be difficult or impossible to meet all their needs for fresh water, creating "a looming crisis that overshadows nearly two-thirds of the Earth's population," the report said.

It was released in Vienna by the International Atomic Energy Agency, a nuclear watchdog organization leading the United Nations' effort to draw attention to the world's water crisis and urge the launching of a "blue revolution" to conserve supplies and develop new ones, Reuters reported on Friday.

"The simple fact is that there is a limited amount of water on the planet, and we cannot afford to be negligent in its use," said the IAEA's director, Mohamed ElBaradei. "We can't keep treating it as if it will never run out."

Already, an estimated 1.1 billion people have no access to safe drinking water, 2.5 billion lack proper sanitation and more than 5 million people die from waterborne diseases each year - 10 times the number of casualties killed in wars around the globe, the report said.

Less than 3 percent of the world's water is fresh, and most of it is trapped in polar ice or buried underground in springs too deep to reach, it said. Freshwater lakes, rivers and reservoirs may seem numerous but provide just a drop in the bucket, the report said.

"Even where supplies are sufficient or plentiful, they are increasingly at risk from pollution and rising demand," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a statement, warning that "fierce national competition over water resources has prompted fears that water issues contain the seeds of violent conflict."

The worst-affected areas are the deserts and semiarid regions of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where fresh drinking water is extremely scarce, in part because of the region's wildly variable climate and unfettered population growth, the World Meteorological Organization said.

Water ministers from 22 African countries have called for a regional and global alliance, backed by international funding, to tackle water and sanitation problems. Among the solutions, they say, are the development of desalination facilities that can turn salt water into drinking water.

Millions of women trudge long distances every day in search of water or send their children to look for it, meaning they miss opportunities to work, grow crops and attend school, the U.N. report said.

"Without adequate clean water, there can be no escape from poverty," said Klaus Toepfer, director of the UN Environment Program. "Water is the basis for good health and food production. Mankind is always at its mercy." Asia facing serious water woes: United Nations

Meanwhile AFP reported from Bangkok on Friday that the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) said that the world's most populous region faces a host of water- related hurdles, including poor delivery and management systems, limited sanitation facilities and a lack of conservation programs.

"Globally, two-thirds of the population is without proper access to clean water, and 80 percent of them are also without access to proper sanitation," UNESCAP's Ravi Sawhney said in a statement to mark the day.

Sawhney said the region's water woes were particularly grueling for millions of Asian women, who walk several kilometers each day on quests for clean water.

"As the world's population increases, demand for water also increases," he said.

The problem is often aggravated by poor water systems, he added, saying that in some Asian countries water supply is being depleted at five times the international average.

"It's not because people there are drinking more water," Sawhney said. "Water is being wasted."

The UN said lack of proper sanitation was a serious issue for people in the Asia Pacific region.

"In many countries in this region arsenic contamination is becoming a very serious problem," Sawhney added. "If the problem is not tackled soon, it could go out of control, endangering the lives of many thousands or millions."

Arsenic occurs naturally in the ground but years of erosion and subsequent floods have caused it to wash down into rivers and streams.

Water supplies are also becoming more fiercely contested on the local and international stage.

Last month 12 people were killed and four others injured in a tribal clash over water supply distribution in southwestern Pakistan.