Seventeen countries face “extremely high” water stress, reports the Washington’s World Resources Institute’s (WRI) Global Water Risk Atlas, which measures water stress, drought risk and riverine flood risk across 189 countries and sub-national regions.
“Water stress is the biggest crisis no one is talking about. Its consequences are in plain sight in the form of food insecurity, conflict and migration, and financial instability,” explains Dr. Andrew Steer, president and CEO of WRI. “The newly updated Aqueduct tools allow users to better see and understand water risks and make smart decisions to manage them.”
WRI notes the countries facing high stress levels — many in the Middle East and Africa — use 80 percent of available water annually, and potential dry spells due to climate change could make matters worse.
At Christian Children’s Fund of Canada, we’ve provided training on how to improve resilience to drought conditions, planting of drought resistant-seeds and we promote water-preservation through rainwater-harvesting tanks, among other initiatives.
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