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AFHGANISTAN

Afghanistan is experiencing significant water scarcity. Water is a major problem in rural and urban areas due to water scarcity, mismanagement and damaged water systems. The country as a whole uses less than one-third of its potential 75,000 million cubic meters of water resources. Regional differences in supply, inefficient use and wastage mean that a major part of the country experiences scarcity. Only 20 percent of Afghans nationwide have access to safe drinking water in both cities and rural areas.

AUSTRALIA

Aboriginal communities in Western Australia are at risk of drinking uranium, arsenic, heavy metals and other toxins in their water, with most lacking sustainable access to protected water supplies. In some areas concentrations of toxic compounds such as uranium, arsenic and heavy metals have exceeded drinking water standards, forcing remote communities to cart water in.

At least three WA government departments are aware of the problem but more than half the state's Aboriginal communities still lack formal monitoring of their drinking water.

CONGO

Despite its abundant water resources, Congo is one of the worst countries in Africa in terms of the availability of drinking water, according to government figures. Coverage in rural areas is 11 percent, against 52 percent in urban and semi-urban areas. Real drinking water needs in Brazzaville are 6,000 cubic meters an hour, a number that is not even close to being met.

CHINA

China suffers from countrywide water pollution. At least 300 million people in the country suffer from water pollution. Entire cities have at times, been subject to having water trucked in as effluent and chemical wastes destroy resources. Additionally, as agriculture grows, streams, water sources and rivers are being diverted in order to grow more acreage. Those diversions lead to added pressures on the remaining water systems and further increases the problem.

EGYPT

Egypt, with some 74 million people, has become a major importer of wheat in recent years, vying with Japan—traditionally the leading wheat importer—for the top spot. It now imports 40 percent of its total grain supply, a number that edges steadily upward as its population outgrows the grain harvest produced with the Nile’s water.

HAITI

Haiti's tragic history, beginning in colonialism and spanning decades of political unrest, violence and government corruption, has left the country without a functioning infrastructure. The system for providing water is no exception. The absence of management, regulations and funding has crippled the two government-owned water services, leaving the country's water resources polluted and severely depleted. According to the Haitian Institute for Statistics and Information, SNEP is only servicing 16 percent to 24 percent of the country. With one of the world's highest infant mortality rates, in large part because of dirty water, a rapidly degenerating environment, and people spending more and more time and money trying to access potable water, Haiti has little time to waste.

INDIA

It takes 1000 tons of water to produce one ton of grain. Water shortages are even more serious in India simply because the margin between actual food consumption and survival is so precarious. At this point, the harvests of wheat and rice, India’s principal food grains, are still increasing. But within the next few years, the loss of irrigation water could override technological progress and start shrinking the harvest in some parts of the country,

INDONESIA

For the moment Indonesia has enough water. However, large parts of the population in the cities and countryside suffer from heavily polluted and disease bearing water for cooking and cleaning.

GAMBIA

The average person in Gambia lives on less than 4 liters of water per day and the government has already began rationing this precious resource.

IRAQ

Iraq is concerned that dam building on the Euphrates River in Turkey and, to a lesser degree, Syria, will leave it without enough water to meet its basic needs. The flow into Iraq of the Euphrates River, which gave birth to the ancient Sumerian civilization, has shrunk by half over the last few decades. Additionally, water deliveries are low and inconsistent die to destruction from the American invasion and the resulting civil warfare,

ISRAEL

A water flash point involves the way water is divided between Israelis and Palestinians. A U.N. report notes that “nowhere are the problems of water governance as starkly demonstrated as in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” Palestinians experience one of the highest levels of water scarcity in the world. But the flash point is as much over inequity in the distribution of water as it is over scarcity. The Israeli population is roughly double that of the Palestinians, but it gets seven times as much water. As others have noted, peace in the region depends on a more equitable distribution of the region’s water. Without this, the peace process itself may dry up.

JORDAN

Jordan squanders its water in the cities and fails to deliver it the countryside. In many towns, water is delivered by truck but this solution won’t last. Every ton of wheat grown through irrigation loses the country over $4000 in the cost of water.

LIBERIA

In Liberia, safe and clean water is a luxury.  Many children use water from streams which looks brown and has insects floating on the surface.  This is the best water they can get in the neighborhood.  These children use this water for washing their hands before every meal.  Water-born diseases such as diarrhea effect the children their health is at risk.  Children need wells with clean drinking water within their own community. The problem is compounded by the lack of long term maintenance and/or destruction of existing facilities in many rural and urban towns during the war.  The majority of people in the rural areas rely on water collected from rivers, pools, shallow wells, springs and swamps. Water is often polluted causing typhoid, cholera, dysentery, worms and parasitic infections.

LAOS

The villages and highland regions discriminated against in Laos and rarely have access to good drinking water. The populations of these villages surface water which is heavily polluted. Children drink water in which animals drink and bathe as well. The absence of drinking water engenders the distribution of infectious infant diseases and diseases such as the cholera, the dengue fever, etc. During the dry season, given the even more severe lack of water, it is impossible to farm as well.

 PAKISTAN

In Pakistan’s arid southwest province of Balochistan, water tables are falling everywhere as a fast-growing local population swelled by Afghan refugees is pumping water far faster than aquifers can recharge. The provincial capital of Quetta, as noted earlier, is facing a particularly dire situation. Naser Faruqui, a researcher at Canada’s International Development Research Centre, describes the situation facing Quetta: “With over a million people living there now, many of whom are Afghan refugees, the possibility of confrontation over decreasing water resources, or even mass migration from the city, is all too real.”

QATAR

Fresh water resources in the region are extremely limited, and yet the demand for them is increasing. As a consequence, much of the available freshwater resources have been depleted, and in some cases polluted. Ground water levels are falling in many areas, and often lead to seawater intrusion into coastal aquifers. Qatar is investing millions in desalinization plants but the problem remains and it appears to be getting only worse, not better.

RUSSIA

Russia has some of the world’s worst polluted water and the problem is nationwide. The Soviet Era created factories without any regard to environmental concerns. The result is drinking water throughout the country that flows directly from effluent and chemical laced aquifers. For example, Dzerzinsk a city of 300,000 people was a significant center of the Russian chemical manufacturing until the end of the Cold War. Today, the average life expectancy is 42 years for men and 47 for women. The city was among Russia's principal production sites of chemical weapons. According to figures from Dzerzhinsk's environmental agency, from 1930-1998, almost 300,000 tons of chemical waste were improperly disposed of.  Of this waste, around 190 separate chemicals were released into the groundwater. These chemicals have turned the water into a white sludge containing dioxins and high levels of phenol – an industrial chemical which can lead to acute poisoning and death. These levels are reportedly 17 million times the safe limit.

The city draws its drinking water from the same aquifers into which these old wastes and unused products were pumped. Now that many of these industries are no longer in operation, the local groundwater has risen, along with the water level in the canal.  This rise in the canal's water level threatens to dump arsenic, mercury, lead and dioxins into the Oka river basin, a source of drinking water for the nearby city of Nizhny Novgorod.

SOUTH AFRICA

South Africa has until recently, not regulated its industrial base in terms of chemical runoff and disposition. As a result a huge portion of the population drinks water that is laced with effluent.

TAJIKISTAN     

Water pollution is one of the chief problems in Tajikistan. The major rivers of the country, such as Amy Darya, Sir Darya and Varzob are polluted as a result of industrial waste, garbage, sewage are indiscriminately dumped in these rivers and streams which , in turn, are the major source for drinking water nationwide.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The US continues to use more water than it has. Water crises are a regular part of life in Florida, California and throughout the western states. The Colorado River for example, the largest in the southwestern United States, now rarely makes it to the sea. As the demand for water increased over the years, diversions from the river have risen to where they now routinely drain it dry. I America, 37% of all irrigation water comes from underground; the other 63 percent comes from surface sources. Yet three of the top grain-producing states—Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska—each get 70–90 percent of their irrigation water from the Ogallala aquifer, which is essentially a fossil aquifer with little recharge. The unusually high productivity of groundwater-based irrigation means that the food production losses will continue to be disproportionately large, especially when the groundwater runs out as it will.

ZAMBIA

Zambia’s high prevalence of environmentally related diseases such as dysentery and cholera are a direct result of water pollution and inadequate sanitation, say the African country's environmental experts and government officials. Environmental authorities have cited waste littering, fecal matter, dumping into ground water which is used for drinking, pests and vermin found in littered waste as sources of concern. The Leopards Hill Cemetery, for example, the largest burial site in Zambia’s capital Lusaka, is contaminated by decomposing bodies which leads to vermin infestations and runoff to land and water sources.