Speed of Remedy Deployment is Key to Reducing Water Scarcity

Any global effort to reduce the ranks of people (and other living things and nature's ecosystems) experiencing water scarcity and shortages must recognize two crucial facts:

1. As time progresses, the water-deprived group will continue to grow by the addition of more people, especially in the developing parts of the world.
2. To get a net reduction in the number of water-deprived people, any remedy must, therefore, be deployed at a rate much larger than the rate of addition to the water-deprived ranks.

Addition to the Water-Deprived Ranks

Source - wikipedia.org

The rate of addition to human population has generally declined over the past 30 years. 
At its peak, 88 million people were added in 1989. The recent lowest addition was 73.9 million people added in 2003. In 2009, however, the human population added 75.3 million people. The annual addition is projected to drop to 43 million people in 2050.


Current Estimates of the Water-Deprived

Source - collections.europarchive.org

Water scarcity was quantified as follows, in 2004, by UNICEF and the World Heath Organization:

• About 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water - This is more than 1 out of every 6 people on Earth
• About 2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation - This is 2 out of every 6 people on Earth

It is, thus, an understatement to say that we have at least 2 billion people today whose thirst for safe drinking water still needs to be quenched.


Water Scarcity Elimination Target
Thus, to maintain the water-deprived population at current levels requires deploying water supply-increasing remedies that impact around 100 million people. Such a number might also reduce by just a very tiny bit, the size of the 2 billion water-deprived population.
A significant dent in the 2 billion water-deprived population will be a reduction in the population by 100 million per year. Thus, thus, requires us to provide safe drinking water to at least 200 million people per year i.e. 100 million in addition to the  maintenance number of 100 million.


Providing Safe Water to 200 Million
The goal of providing water to 200 million people in one year is equivalent to providing safe water to:
- nearly 548,000 people/day or
- nearly 22,831 people/hour, or
- nearly 381 people/minute, or
- nearly 6 people/second


Challenge of the MASSIVE SCALE of Water Scarcity
The 200 million goal, at first look, appears impossible to meet or imagine. But there may be clues in how other industries have reached numbers that come close to those required to provide safe water to 200 million more people every year.
The Lesson from the Telephone Industry - Joseph Schumpeter's concept of 'gales of creative destruction' applied to water scarcity implies that the existing water-industry complex has very little incentive to innovate and innovation can only come from outside - like it did in the telephone industry, where mobile phones have transformed the traditional telephone industry by being able to supply a "product" that requires minimal customization in the local environment.


Necessary Characteristics of the Remedy for Water Scarcity

1. What constitutes the product that requires insignificant local customization and increases supply of safe freshwater to people anywhere on Earth? The answer to this question incorporates humanity's need for speed in supplying safe drinking water to those that are deprived of this life resource today.
2. Must address the daunting variety of water problems that are found all over the globe, and
3. Must work anywhere on Earth

The second and third characteristics were identified in the post dated October 1, 2011, titled "Water Needs Thinking on a Massive Scale"