The Global Water Crisis: A Reference Handbook (Contemporary World Issues)

How is water scarcity becoming a serious problem worldwide―including in the United States? This book provides a broad overview of water, sanitation, and hygiene problems faced by both developing and developed nations around the globe and suggests how these problems can be solved by imaginative and innovative thinking.

Human society depends on sufficient clean water. In many parts of the world, however, this most basic commodity is in very short supply. Even in developed, first-world nations, climate change and other factors have begun to create alarming water supply issues. The Global Water Crisis: A Reference Handbook provides a detailed overview of this important topic, enabling readers to understand the nature of the world's water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) problems and to know what resources are best for conducting their own research on the topic.

The first chapter of the book provides the historical background information pertaining to the world's water and sanitation problems; the second chapter documents the problems, explores the issues, and presents potential solutions for understanding the nature of WASH issues. The other sections provide the needed resources for readers to study the issue of the global water crisis further: perspective essays, primary documents, biographical profiles, data and documents, an extended annotated bibliography, a chronology, and a glossary.

• Provides readers with an understanding of the severity of the water scarcity in the world today

• Explains the nature of various sanitation issues around the world, how they arise, the problems for which they are responsible, and some possible solutions

• Outlines the reasons that droughts are becoming a more serious problem in many parts of the world and what can be done to deal with these water shortages

• Highlights the new, specialized problems concerning water supply raised by climate change