There's good and bad news from a sweeping new report on the world's water scarcity out this week from McKinsey & Co., and commissioned by such water-dependent companies as Coca-Cola, SAB Miller, Nestle and Syngenta, along with the World Bank/International Finance Corp.
The bad: Global demand for water already exceeds supply - about 1.1 billion people don't have access to clean water - and the so-called water gap is increasing at an accelerating rate.
The good: Cost-effective, sustainable solutions are obtainable to close the gap, particularly if governments and business focus on reducing demand rather than trying to generate additional supply.
The challenge: Getting beyond the nostrum that water is a "human right" so that water, which is perceptibly a scarce resource, can be priced in a way that drives conservation.
One more thing to know: Water issues are at least as complex as energy, and all water problems are local, so generalizing about water, while inevitable, is invariably misleading.
The bad: Global demand for water already exceeds supply - about 1.1 billion people don't have access to clean water - and the so-called water gap is increasing at an accelerating rate.
The good: Cost-effective, sustainable solutions are obtainable to close the gap, particularly if governments and business focus on reducing demand rather than trying to generate additional supply.
The challenge: Getting beyond the nostrum that water is a "human right" so that water, which is perceptibly a scarce resource, can be priced in a way that drives conservation.
One more thing to know: Water issues are at least as complex as energy, and all water problems are local, so generalizing about water, while inevitable, is invariably misleading.
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