The world water deficit is a recent phenomenon. It is a product of the tripling of water demand over the last half-century, which was accelerated by the rapid worldwide spread of powerful diesel and electrically driven pumps.
Unlike burning forests or invading sand dunes, falling water tables are often discovered only when wells go dry.
We are currently consuming water that belongs to future generations. In some countries, the fall of water tables is dramatic.
In Yemen, a country of 19 million people, the water table under most of the country is falling by roughly 2 meters a year — as water use far exceeds the sustainable yield of aquifers.
World Bank official Christopher Ward observes that “groundwater is being mined at such a rate that parts of the rural economy could disappear within a generation.”
In the basin where Yemen's capital, Sana’a, is located — and where the water table is falling 6 meters (nearly 20 feet) per year — the aquifer will be depleted by the end of this decade.
In the search for water, the Yemeni government has drilled test wells in the basin that are 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) deep.
Those are depths normally associated with the oil industry, but even they have failed to find water.
Yemen must soon decide whether to bring water to Sana’a, possibly from coastal desalting plants — or to relocate the capital.
Iran, a country of 70 million people, is facing an acute shortage of water. Under the agriculturally rich Chenaran Plain in northeastern Iran, the water table was falling by 2.8 meters a year in the late 1990s.
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