A farmer takes water from a mostly dried-up pond to soak his
vegetable field on the outskirts of Yingtan, China, on Dec. 10,
2007. Akhtar Soomro / Reuters Two-year-old Saghar, a flood
victim, takes a bath in a relief camp in Sukkur, Pakistan, on
Sept. 7, 2010. No resource is more precious and vital than
water. As the world population grows to 7 billion on Oct. 31, as
projected by the United Nations Population Fund, the amount of
water available per person shrinks. Yet the per-person
consumption of resources — especially in industrialized nations
— grows exponentially, analysts warn. Shifting rainfall patterns
exacerbate the problem. Marcio Silva / Amazona Spress via
Reuters A woman carries water she drew from a pool of a drying
tributary of the Amazon River as the season drought worsens to
one of the worst in recent years, in Parana do Paraua, Brazil,
on Nov. 24, 2009. After a rainy season that caused some of the
worst flooding in recent history, the seasonal drought that
followed proved to be especially bad