It may be a Blue Planet but many people on the Planet don’t have access to clean water. With all the water on the planet only 3% of the Earth's water is fresh. 2.5% of the Earth's fresh water is unavailable: locked up in glaciers, polar ice caps, atmosphere, and soil; highly polluted; or lies too far under the earth's surface to be extracted at an affordable cost. Only 0.5% of the Earth's water is available fresh water for people’s uses. Water may be the most valuable resource on Earth. .More valuable the fossil fuels or precious metals
With such a valuable resource you would think that it is being carefully managed and that policies to provide fresh water would be in the forefront of most communities and governments. Because this isn’t often the case a number of priorities need to be established.
First people need to be educated to change consumption and lifestyle habits. Then water sources such as aquifers, lakes, rivers, etc. need to be protected and conserved. Finally water and air pollution must be limited so that water sources remain clean.
Climate change is increasing the difficulty of accomplishing all of these priorities. Lifestyles in the developed world are currently squandering water wealth or they are importing water from areas that can’t afford to lose the water. In other cases developing countries may have difficulty providing clean water to populations because of the disappearance of water sources. A more difficult problem to understand is how vegetation helps to clean and retain water. When wildfires occur with greater frequency they cause a loss of vegetation and increase water run off and pollution. Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of wildfires.
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