John Gould
Mrs. DeSimone
Gate, 9
8 November 2011
Water Usage PSA
The world is made up of 70.9% water. Only 2.5% of the world is freshwater and 98.8% of freshwater is found in ice and groundwater. 0.2% of that water is found in lakes and rivers. Safe drinking water is essential to humans and other life forms. Approximately 1 billion people on Earth lack access to safe water and 2.5 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation. So how do regions that lack freshwater differ from regions that lack sanitary water?
Developing regions seem to have the ability to find or access freshwater but do not have the adequate sanitation resources. They need the technology used to sanitize their water. This is one difference between the two types of regions. Another is the funding needed to explore with these technologies. Developing countries normally do not have strong economies and cannot fund scientists to try to understand these technologies. Which is why, I believe instead of giving freshwater to other countries the United States needs to give the other countries the technology to sanitize freshwater.
Undeveloped regions seem to lack the ability to find and sanitize freshwater. These are the countries that need to be given sanitized freshwater. Undeveloped regions normally do not have a strong government if any at all. Without a government they do not have anyone to regulate their water usage. Those regions need to be given freshwater also because they probably are at conflict with other bordering regions over who has control over the resource.
The differences between these regions are that one has the ability to succeed on its own with the right funding or technology. The other will remain dependent on other regions until it can regulate water usage but they would need some form of government to be able to do that. Both are similar in the way that their water resources are useless as they stand now without help from other regions or resources outside of their region.

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