Once upon a time, mother nature created the planet Earth and it was beautiful.

Water was abundant and it covered 70 %

of this planet surface. From space, it was a bright blue, but that's where the fairytale ends.
Ninety-seven percent of the Earth's water is ocean, therefore it is largely unusable to humans for drinking , sanitation,
cooking, or growing crops for food. Two percent is frozen in icecaps and glaciers. Another small portion consists of salty
inland seas and lakes, soil moisture, and the atmosphere, which leaves less than one percent available for human
domestic use. This small portion of the water supply consists largely of underground reservoirs of water called ground
water, but also includes the small amount in freshwater lakes and rivers.
Water is a finite resource, that is, the water we have on the planet is all we have. We cannot make more. So, it's possible
that the glass of water a person drinks today may have been in a dinosaur's intestine millions of years ago. One of water's
unique characteristics is its versatility; it exists on Earth in many different forms, often changing from one state to the
next ( liquid to solid, solid to liquid, liquid to gas, gas to liquid).
So, the one per cent of fresh water available to us is depleting fast. the obvious reasons is that the ever increasing number
of human beings have also increased their consumption excessively. Add to that, deforestation, scanty rainfall, a decrease
in seepage areas, excessive agricultural activities, water pollution and industrialization. Altogether we have the recipe for
disaster.
What consequences does this bring?
Well, lack of water means that our survival is at stake. No living thing can survive without water. As we progress into the
21 century conflicts between nations will no longer be over oil but over water - the next BLUE GOLD. Nations will
fight for it and many will die for it.
Already, water shortages are visible in the middle east in countries such as :Syria, Israel, Palestine...These countries
already face conflicts and wars over religion and land, now another threat is on the horizon.
SOLUTIONS?
With so little fresh water on our planet, we really need to think about what we can do to save water and change the course
that we are following. Some ways include:

Building Dams - This can be beneficial to increase the water supply for cities and industry, produce
hydroelectric power and also for irrigation.
Bringing water from somewhere else - By using pipelines can also help provide an easy solution to water
shortages in a specific area.
Withdrawing groundwater - This process is cheaper to extract than most surface waters and there is no
evaporation loss
Wasting less water - We already know that we need to waste less water and we are aware of simple solutions
each of us can do at home. Turning off taps and using machines on full load, but we can consider other things
that would be beneficial not only to save water but also to cut costs.
We can:
Collect more reuse household water to irrigate laws and no edible plants.
Collect rainwater in tanks for the same purpose.
Use drip irrigation which is a system that delivers water drop by drop directly onto your plants without
wasting.
Install water saving toilets, showerheads, and taps which use less pressure, therefore less water.
Desalination - from all the possible water saving solutions. Desalination is probably the one that makes most
sense for our growing needs. With so many seas and oceans it seems that desalination is the best way to go.
What does it involve?
Desalination refer to any of several processes that remove some amount of salt and other minerals from
saline water. Salt water is desalinated to produce fresh water suitable for human consumption or irrigation. Due
to relatively high energy consumption the cost of desalinating sea water are generally higher than the alternatives,
but alternatives are not always available. Believe it or not there are more countries that use this type of process
that you can imagine. There are 150 countries where desalination is practiced, they get 66.5 million cubic meters
of water by desalination per day and 300 million of people around the world who rely on this water for some or
all their daily needs
As we have seen, we really need to think about how we manager our water supply. We take water for granted
everyday and one day we will open our taps to discover that nothing is coming out. Each one of us needs to play
an active role and do something to ensure that future generations will be able to appreciate this resource and have
a healthy planet live on.