Purpose

“ If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water. ”

TThis is a passage by Ismail Serageldin from 1995. Ismail Serageldin was the vice President of the World Bank. Water crisis has already been feared since then.

WHO, the World Health Organization, says that 2.1 billion out of 7.5 billion people of the population of the world cannot use safe drinking water at their home.
884 million of them do not have safe water source within 30 minutes from their home.

On the other hand, people in Japan can use safe water easily by just turning on a faucet. They do not have high consciousness of water problems and the sense of crisis of water shortage. Because there is precipitation throughout the year in Japan. Moreover, the quantity of virtual water Japan imports reaches 64 billion ㎥/yr (*1). Japan is one of the countries that imports virtual water most in the world.

When we started our research, we posited the following hypothesis
“if we, as people using water a lot, reduce the quantity of virtual water, people who cannot get safe water easily will be able to get it more.”

However, the findings from our research suggested that solving water problems is not as easy as we thought. What are the cause-and-effect relationships of water problems around the world? How can people in the world get safe water?

Let us learn reasons of water problems and think about them not only from virtual water but also from multiple view aspects such as environment and economic conditions with us. Finally, we would like you to think about what can we do to solve those water problems.

*1:Japan Meteorological Agency, Virtual water, Retrieved November 9, 2018