Increasing concern about our water footprint

It’s not only our carbon footprint we should worry about, U.N. experts say. They warn about our growing water footprint.

Nearly half the people on Earth, about 2.5 billion, have no access to sanitation, many of them in urban slums. The world’s cities are growing by 1 million people a week, and soon their aging water systems will not cope. Farming demand on water is increasing.

"What we are doing now can’t keep up with the issues we already have," said Carol A. Howe, an expert working for a UNESCO-led water development project called Switch.

"Something needs to change. It needs to change quickly, and it needs to be fairly dramatic," she told a symposium for journalists Wednesday.

The threat of climate change has drawn attention to the carbon footprint, the amount of greenhouse gases produced by human activity. Now scientists have begun calculating a water footprint, the amount of water needed to produce goods or services.

By Arthur Max, Associated Press

Full Story: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2008-03-28-water-footprint_N.htm?csp=tech