Water is a vital resource, a precious commodity and itssaving is essential. While the concept of water stress is relatively new, it isthe difficulty of obtaining sources of fresh water for use during a period oftime and may result in further depletion and deterioration of available waterresources. Its management is imperative and if water harnessing and saving isnot considered as an element of innovations, the future survival would bedifficult for nations. With globalpopulation grown from 1 billion in 1800 to 7.616 billion in 2018 and furtherexpected to keep growing, with a forecast of 8.6 billion by mid-2030, 9.8billion by mid-2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100, if nothing substantial is done for saving this resource, the thirdworld war will be fought for water. Withthe unabated inhabitants’ growths, the demand of such valuable resource hasincreased both from agriculture and industry; researchers and experts indicatedthat this crisis is only likely to worsen.
Presently, more than 1.2 billion people of the world lackaccess to clean drinking water. Many nations are already experiencing ashortage of water resources and will see their water issues worsen, causinghardships for millions. South Africa along with many other African and MiddleEast countries are presently encountering the water shortage problem, whereinthe government has formed task forces for even distribution of clean water tohouseholds under security. Water shortages may be caused by climate change,such as altered weather patterns including droughts or floods, increasedpollution, and increased human demand and overuse/ misuse of water.
A water crisis generally results with the available potable,unpolluted water within a region is less than that region’s demand. Waterscarcity is being driven by two converging phenomena: growing freshwater useand depletion of usable freshwater resources. Water scarcity could be a resultof two mechanisms: physical (absolute) water scarcity and economic waterscarcity, whereas the physical water scarcity is a result of inadequate naturalwater resources to supply a region’s demand, and economic water scarcity is aresult of poor management of the sufficient available water resources, whichalso includes excessive use and wastage of pure water used for domestic andagriculture purposes.
Innovations and management of water resources is arsenal tofight for such a global crisis. Many institutions around the world have alreadystarted to innovatively design processes and systems for water harvesting andwater management. Many innovative ideas have come forth for obtaining aplausible solution to save water, right from Rooftop rain water harvesting tocreating artificial Glaciers. Innovators are also trying to design and developappliance and machines which could be used effectively for water saving whileutilising the water for domestic or agriculture purpose.