From the perspective of the publisher of this web site, there is no looming global water shortage, as such.The world's media delight in trumpeting gloom and doom; after all it is only bad happenings, or the anticipation of bad happenings, that are 'newsworthy'.

While it is true that there are many (mostly local) water 'crises' happening now, and a lot more coming soon, the global problem is very much one of perceptions and attitudes towards water.

The most important of these is that we, almost universally, place such a low value on water that we waste huge quantitities. A major part of this is explainable by the fact that, right up through the 20th century, water engineers (and the agencies that employed them) just 'assumed' that it was the government's DUTY to supply whatever quantity of water the community chose to take, free - or nearly free - of charge.

Two things have now changed:

1) Some regions are experiencing a combination of population growth and/or water profligate lifestyles that has started to put pressure on local, often inexpensively developed, supplies, and;

2) With the pressures of Globalization there has come increasing acceptance of the notion that water users should pay something (and that water wasters should pay a lot) for the what they take from systems built from the public purse.

Under these circumstances, water 'development' has effectively stopped in many parts of the world, even where only a small fraction of the available fresh water has been developed. This has begun to subject many consumers to situations of apparently severely limited supply, that are really not due to any absolute shortage of water resources.