“If you are in a dry area, you are going to get a lot less rainfall. His findings conclude that the most severe impacts of climate change will deplete water supplies.

Richard Damania, a lead economist at the World Bank, predicts that without adequate water supplies, economic growth in the most stressed parts of the world could decline by six percent of GDP. Nearly two billion people rely on groundwater that is considered under threat. Many of them are being drawn down at unsustainable rates. Now, the world’s largest underground water reserves in Africa, Eurasia, and the Americas are under stress. These aquifers long have served as a backup to carry regions and countries through droughts and warm winters lacking enough snowmelt to replenish rivers and streams. More than two-thirds of the groundwater consumed around the world irrigates agriculture, while the rest supplies drinking water to cities. About 30 percent of the planet’s available freshwater is in the aquifers that underlie every continent.

The United Nations predicts a global shortfall in water by 2030. Sections of California’s Central Valley have dropped by a foot, and in some localized areas, by as much as 28 feet.Īround the world, alarms are being sounded about the depletion of underground water supplies. Parts of Shanghai, Mexico City, and other cities are sinking, too. Unauthorized use is prohibited.īeijing isn’t the only place experiencing subsidence, or sinking, as soil collapses into space created as groundwater is depleted.

Block city wars 2016