حداقل نیاز آب برای توسعه اجتماعی و اقتصادی

There is no common understanding of the minimum per capita fresh water requirement for human health and economic and social development. Existing estimates vary between 20 and 4,654 l/c/d, however, these estimates are methodologically problematic as they consider only human consumptive and hygiene needs, or they consider economic needs but not the effects of trade. Reconsidering the components of a minimum water requirement estimate for human health and for economic and social development suggests that a country requires a minimum of 135 l/c/d. With all countries except Kuwait having much greater water resources than this, water scarcity alone need not hinder development. Given the steadily decreasing cost of desalination together with the relatively small amount of water required per capita to permit social and economic development, desalination should be affordable where necessary for all but the very least economically developed countries where local naturally occurring freshwater resources are insufficient and saline water is available.

In the Millennium Declaration of the UN General Assembly in 2000 a commitment was made to halve by 2015 the global proportion of people without access to safe drinking water [1]. The international community both confirmed and extended this commitment in the 2002 Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development [2].

Both a sectoral approach — based on estimating hypothetically the minimum water requirements overall of a water efficient economy through an examination of different economic sectors, and a development efficiency approach — based upon identifying the minimum threshold of water usage required to sustain high human development as demonstrated by countries with high human development, can be used to estimate the minimum amount of water required for social and economic development. Using both approaches allows the results of each to be cross checked and verified.