Graphs of world water information
With the increase of population and global warming, the global confronts critical water crisis in the present.
Earth’s water resources are unevenly distributed that the vast majority of the world’s water is oceans (Figure 1). Freshwater only accounts for 2.5% of the total of Earth’s water. A large amount of global freshwater is stored in the glaciers and groundwater. The proportion of surface water only takes up a very small part of the freshwater. Moreover, larger than half of the surface water is ground ice. The rest of surface freshwater contains in the lakes, swamps, and other places. Therefore, global freshwater is mainly in frozen form, and a tiny proportion of freshwater water can use for living.
Along with the irregular distribution of global water resources, regional water shortage is serious. Safe drinking water between urban and rural in different countries over the period from 1988 to 2008 were unequally distributed (Figure 7). In general, the number of people with access to safe drinking water increased year by year, with especially large increases in rural areas. However, rural areas still had a lot more people without safe drinking water than urban areas. Besides, since 1988, almost everyone in
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Figure 5 shows changes in the number of global water demand between 2000 and 2050 among Organization for Economies Co-operation and Development (OECD), Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, Chile, South Africa (BRIICS), and Rest of World (RoW) and World. The largest portion of global water demand was irrigation in all three groups. Even though the majority of global water in the World was still used for irrigation, demand for irrigation is predicted to be lower in 2050 than in 2000. Moreover, there is an increase in the water demand for livestock, manufacturing, and electricity in 2050. Compared with the BRIICS, water demand in the OECD and the RoW is