The United States has enough water to satisfy the demand, but newly released data from the World Resources Institute shows some areas are out of balance.
The WRI’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas researchers used hydrological models and more than 50 years of data to estimate the typical water supply of 189 countries compared to their demand. The result was a scale of “water stress” — how close a country comes to draining its annual water stores in a typical year.
Of course, many years are not typical, and unpredictable weather patterns of a changing climate can have drastic consequences. In areas of high or extremely high water stress, said Betsy Otto, director of WRI’s Global Water Program, “if you then hit a drought … you’re really in trouble, because you’re already using most of what you have.”
