A few days ago I had a conversation with the Chief Operating Officer for our agricultural fund in Chile.
We were discussing water, and he told me that roughly 60% of California right now is suffering “extreme drought” conditions. 30% of the state is in “severe drought”. And 10% of the state is only under “drought”.
In other words, roughly the entire state– the 8th largest economy in the world– is facing a severe shortage of water.
But if you think that’s bad, China is about to take over the spotlight yet again.
A study by China’s Ministry of Water Resources found that approximately 55% of China’s 50,000 rivers that existed in the 1990s have disappeared.
Moreover, China is over-exploiting its groundwater by 22 billion cubic meters per year; yet its per-capita water consumption is less than one third of the global average.
(Read the rest of the story here…)