OF COURSE, THEY WILL COME, UNLESS URGENT MEASURES ARE TAKEN TO IMPROVE WATER USE AND SAVE WATER Only a lazy person does not speak about the imminent water shortage and the upcoming "water crisis". And most people perceive this kind of conversation as an inappropriate joke. What is the "water crisis", what is the water shortage? Yes, look-how much it is around! In rivers and lakes... In the rain and snow... In rowing channels and swimming pools... In process pipelines of enterprises and agricultural irrigation channels... And the world map - which is mostly blue in color-is mostly made up of oceans and seas... Indeed, 94% of the water available on Earth is concentrated in the world's oceans. Another 4% is groundwater; 1.6% is ice and snow surrounding the North and South Poles. And only 0.4% is water from rivers, lakes, and swamps. It is from these 0.4% that humanity draws water for its vital activity. In total, people annually consume 3.5 thousand cubic kilometers of water from various sources, mainly from rivers. But only 1.4 thousand cubic km is returned to these sources after human use, mostly in a highly polluted state. Of course, river water resources are far from exhausted - the total flow of river water is close to 40 thousand cubic kilometers per year. But the fact is that these resources are very unevenly distributed across the Earth. River drains are also used unevenly. In Europe, a large part of the United States, as well as in the Ganges River basin of India, in the north-eastern provinces of China, in Latin America - mainly in the Amazon basin, the world's most abundant river - there is still enough water, although there are no significant surpluses here either. But in the Asia-Pacific region, including Japan, the Republic of Korea, Thailand, as well as in the Middle East in the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates basins, the situation with water supply to the population is extremely acute. In total, there are 1.1 billion people in the world. a person, or about o ... Читать далее