Although the earth is about 71% water, only a fraction of it is potable fresh water.37% of water is actual drinkable fresh water, of which .28% is actually accessible to us. When that is boiled down, only .00001036% of water on the earth is usable to humans. Therefore, with over 7 billion people on the earth, it is no wonder that there are water problems on earth. .
Over one billion people do not have access to clean water and almost 2.5 billion do not have access to adequate sanitation. These problems are concentrated in third-world and non-western countries, such as many areas of Africa, parts of Asia, and the Middle East. It can be seen that these same areas with little usable water also have poor hygiene. This is evident on this map, where the darker shades of purple indicate poorer hygiene. The causes of lack of water are pollution of water due to industry, overfishing, pollution and waste being dumped into water, climate change, population increase, demographic changes, and urbanization. In some nations the main source of water come from major rivers that flow through up to 4 to 5 nations and usually these rivers are found on the borders of these nations and treaties control whether certain nations can have access to the water. People living downstream also rely on the goodwill of people living upstream.
A potential solution, or at least a slowing factor to water depletion is desalination. Desalination is the process of removing the salt and minerals from water to make it drinkable. It is done by heating water up to a boil, and distilling the minerals from it, followed by a filtering process. The end goal of desalination is to decrease the level of salt and other harmful minerals in water that normally wouldn't be drinkable to make it drinkable, and it can be done with just about any water that is not contaminated chemically. The are a few pros to the process of desalination. One of these pros are that desalination is able to become a regular in-home process to combat water struggles.
