Journal
HYDROLOGICAL SCIENCES JOURNAL-JOURNAL DES SCIENCES HYDROLOGIQUES
Volume 48, Issue 3, Pages 339-348Publisher
IAHS PRESS, INST HYDROLOGY
DOI: 10.1623/hysj.48.3.339.45278
Keywords
global water resources; hydrological model; integrated assessment; scenario analysis; water scarcity; water stress; water availability; water use; water withdrawals
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New global models provide the opportunity to generate quantitative information about the world water situation. Here the WaterGAP 2 model is used to compute globally comprehensive estimates about water availability, water withdrawals, and other indicators on the river-basin scale. In applying the model to the current global water situation, it was found that about 24% of world river basin area has a withdrawal to availability ratio greater than 0.4, which some experts consider to be a rough indication of severe water stress; the impacts of this stress are expected to be stronger in developing countries than in industrialized ones. Under a business-as-usual scenario of continuing demographic, economic and technological trends up to 2025, water withdrawals are expected to stabilize or decrease in 41% of world river basin areas because of the saturation of water needs and improvement in water-use efficiency. Withdrawals grow elsewhere because population and economic growth will lead to rising demand for water, and this outweighs the assumed improvements in water-use efficiency. An uncertainty analysis showed that the uncertainty of these estimates is likely to have a strong geographic variability.
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