Overconsumption of water by the wealthy urban elite is a bigger cause of global water shortages than climate change and population growth. This has been concluded in an international composition of researchers from universities in the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom research published Monday in scientific journal Nature Sustainability.
The unequal distribution of capital means that wealthy people use the scarce amount of water to fill their swimming pools, water gardens and wash cars, while the less fortunate lack sufficient drinking and washing water.
The researchers base their conclusion on a case study in Cape Town, where the economic elite and upper middle class make up just over one-eighth of the population, but together use more than half of all water. And although more than 61 percent of the South African metropolis consists of poor and low-income residents, they are responsible for only slightly more than a quarter (27.3 percent) of the entire water consumption.
Unequal distribution
In previous studies, scientists have identified water shortages as a growing (urban) problem, mainly as a result of climate change and population growth. The authors of the study in Nature Sustainability emphasize the uneven distribution of available water.
Over the past two decades, more than eighty metropolitan areas around the world have experienced water shortages due to drought and overconsumption. Scientists’ predictions also promise little improvement: the United Nations warned last month at the first water conference in half a century that a global water crisis is imminent. UN General António Guterres also spoke of it at the time “vampiric overconsumption” of the “lifeblood of mankind.”