It's hard to believe there's a world
water crisis when here in the UK we
often get a lot of rain, but this week
is World Water Week, where experts and
containers are highlighting the biggest
water problems the world is facing. In
some parts of Africa and Asia, families
have to walk miles to collect water from
rivers, which can be dirty or even
dangerous. The United Nations says that
around a quarter of the world's
population don't have safe drinking
water and almost half don't have proper
toilet facilities.
And because of climate change and
population growth, a shortage of water
is affecting more and more people. Over
here in the UK, parts of England and
Wales are officially in drought after
the driest 6 months in almost 50 years.
At the moment, we're lucky the drought
hasn't affected the water running to our
houses. But if the dry weather
continues, and if households and water
companies aren't more careful with their
supply, many are warning that we could
face water restrictions and farmers
won't be able to properly water their
crops.
We asked Sky News climate reporter
Victoria Seabbrook if the UK is running
out of water and what's being done to
help. It's unlikely that the UK or the
world will have entirely run out of
water ever. But what is very likely and
what is happening already in many parts
of the world is that we are using more
water than there is available,
particularly clean water. It's things
like people moving to cities. So water
systems weren't designed to cope with
that number of people, more demands from
farming. But the big overarching trend
is climate change. Climate change is
disrupting the world's natural water
cycle. It is making droughts more
intense. That means that more water is
licked off rivers and reservoirs. And
then when more water evaporates, that
means that when it rains, it rains more
heavily. When it rains really heavily,
it's hard to capture that water. Systems
weren't quite designed to cope with
that. Although the government and the
water industry are doing things to to
address that things like plans to build
nine or 10 new reservoirs, there's also
going to be many more smart meters in
our home. So these are devices that
measure how much water that we use and
we're charged accordingly and that
incentivizes people to reduce how much
they use.