Water as a Productive Resource

Global challenges of water and production are essentially solved locally. There is no global solution to problems of water availability for production. This report charts some of the local issues involved and makes the case for a local-level view of the global challenge. What is that challenge? Water is not an abundant resource. Three-quarters of global freshwater is trapped in ice sheets and glaciers; less than 1% flows freely on the surface; and some 20% is stored underground. In most parts of the world, distribution of flows and available sub-surface water is highly uneven. With these figures come concerns about scarcity. The global community is fixated by per capita availability on which it determines simple figures for scarcity.