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Demand of water to be double By 2050
August 25th 2006: World's demand for water will double by 2050, with a third of the globe's population already facing shortages of the precious resource, an international expert has warned.
Dr Frank Rijsberman, a Dutch scientist who heads the eminent International Water Management Institute, said about 2.5 billion people – most of them in Asia – already faced scarcity of water. He delivered a daunting assessment of the world's current and future water needs to the Crawford Fund's annual development conference in Canberra.
In another paper delivered to the conference, the International Food Policy Research Institute warned that failure to change current trends in water policy and investment would strip 350 million tonnes from the world's annual food production by 2025.
The figure is more than the entire grain crop in the United States.
Dr Rijsberman said the total amount of water needed for the world would double between now and 2050.
That would likely lead to big price rises – at least double, possibly treble current levels. But the increases were unlikely to match oil prices, currently approaching $US80 a barrel.
Dr Rijsberman highlighted huge differences in the global pricing of water, saying "designer" products like Perrier bottled water already topped the price of oil.
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