🎒 Base knowledge and understanding

🌿 Content

🔑 Key terms

Phase 1: Spot the pattern

The table below shows four countries. Look at the data carefully before answering the questions.

Country Annual rainfall (mm) GDP per capita (US$) % with safely managed drinking water
🇨🇭 Switzerland ~1,200 ~95,000 100
🇦🇪 UAE ~100 ~50,000 99
🇭🇹 Haiti ~1,400 ~1,700 23
🇳🇪 Niger ~150 ~600 ~14

Approximate figures, World Bank and WHO/UNICEF JMP, 2022 to 2023.

  1. Which country has the most rainfall? Which has the best access to safe water? Are they the same country?

  2. Identify two countries with very different rainfall but similar access to safe water. What does this suggest is more important than rainfall?

  3. Predict: which single factor in the table is the best predictor of access to safe water? Justify in one sentence.

Phase 2: What is water security?

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4.2.1 Water security is having access to sufficient amounts of safe drinking water.

Water security is a significant component of sustainable societies.

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The IB definition

Water security has three parts. To be water-secure, a society needs:

  1. Sufficient quantity of water (enough litres per person per day)
  2. Safe quality of water (free of pathogens and pollutants)
  3. Reliable access (available when needed, not just in the rainy season)

The World Health Organization estimates that a person needs around 20 litres per day as an absolute minimum for drinking, cooking and basic hygiene to avoid disease, and around 50 to 100 litres per day for a comfortable standard of living.

A society that meets all three conditions for all of its people is water-secure. A society that fails on any one of them is not. Water security is described as a "significant component of sustainable societies" because without it people cannot stay healthy, food cannot be grown reliably, and economies cannot function.

  1. State the three components of water security.

  2. A wealthy city has unlimited piped water that is heavily contaminated with industrial pollutants. Is it water-secure? Explain.

  3. A village has a clean spring, but the spring runs dry for four months of every year. Is the village water-secure? Explain.

Phase 3: Physical vs economic scarcity

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4.2.5 Water scarcity refers to the limited availability of water to human societies.

Water availability may be limited by the actual abundance of water present (physical scarcity) or by the available storage and transport systems (economic scarcity).

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Two ways water can be "scarce"