Revision as of 13:22, 27 August 2012 by
***** (***** | *****)Water scarcity is defined as the gap between the available supply and the expressed demand of freshwater in a specified domain, under prevailing institutional arrangements (including both resource ‘pricing’ and retail charging arrangements) and infrastructural conditions (FAO, 2012 forthcoming).
Definition
Water scarcity = an excess of water demand over available supply
Scarcity is signaled by unsatisfied demand, tensions between users, competition for water, over- extraction of groundwater and insufficient flows to the natural environment.
Water scarcity is caused by a wide-ranging combination of factors, all which are related to human interference with the water cycle. Water scarcity is fundamentally dynamic: its level can vary within a given time frame as a result of natural hydrological variability, but even more so due to prevailing economic policy, planning and management approaches, and the varying capacity of societies to anticipate changing levels of supply or demand. Scarcity can result from short-sighted policies, such as the over-allocation of water use licenses in a river basin, or from the excessive expansion of irrigation areas with free or low-cost water for farmers. The problem intensifies with increasing demand by users and/or with the decreasing availability and quality of the resource. Scarcity can arises in close juxtaposition with water plenty if there is no legal or institutional arrangement in place to improve access, or if the required infrastructure does not exist or is not feasible. When identified correctly, many causes of scarcity can be predicted, avoided and/or mitigated.
