Overcoming Distance is Humanity's Fundamental Freshwater Challenge

Transportation of water to where people have chosen to live or forcing people to live in close proximity to freshwater supplies are two solutions that mankind has practiced ever since the beginning of civilization. This "transportation" issue is still the heart of our current and future freshwater crises.


Places with Meager Freshwater Supplies
The story and images of women spending their day carting water from sources far, far away from where they live, are well known and publicized as a scourge on the already poor. 

Source - newstimeafrica.com

Source - workworthdoing.com

Innovators have developed devices, like the rolling container that makes water transportation a less physical activity, but does not address the basic issue - the water is far away from where the people who need it are.

Ancient Roman Aqueduct
Source - think2020.tripod.com

In the richer parts of the world the solution to this basic issue is no different, except in scale and institutionalization - the formation of an organization which exists for the sole purpose of supplying needed freshwater.

Source - planetforward.org

Source - spannertech.com

Without such costly and massive creations, most of the population centers in the developed world would also be susceptible to water shortages and supply disruptions.
Covering the distance problem is still the most basic issue behind the supply of freshwater.
Places with Abundant Freshwater Supply
Humanity's Freshwater crisis would disappear in an instant if people lived in locations where there currently exists an abundant natural supply of freshwater and where future freshwater supplies were assured.

Source - worldatlas.com

Unfortunately, however, the two locations with the most freshwater resources (the areas around the North and South Poles) are too inhospitable for long human existence.


And there are no other locations that have necessary freshwater supplies for the existing and future mega-cities that are projected to house nearly 50% of the world's population.


The Distance Eliminating Solutions
The only "local" bodies of freshwater, that can eliminate or, at least, drastically shorten the distance, are the bodies of water located in the "local" air (the atmosphere) and under the ground over which people live. The reality that local underground supplies are already non-existent or under severe stress of becoming extinct, leaves only the option of finding ways to harvest water from the local atmosphere.