Global water resources

There’s plenty of water on Earth

Without water life would be impossible on Earth. So it’s only good that 70% of the Earth surface is covered by water. If the earth surface was levelled, 2440 meters of water would cover the whole planet.

There’s shortage of fresh water

A total of 97% of all water on earth is salty seawater - only 3% is fresh water. And most of the fresh water is hard to come by. 77% of it forms glaciers and further 22% is deep in soil and bedrock. Only about 1% of all fresh water is in lakes, rivers and reservoirs that can be easily utilized. This corresponds to 0.036% of all water resources. 0.001% of our water is vaporized in clouds. On average the water is renewed in rivers once every two weeks and in lakes once in ten years. In glaciers, water can be bound up to 10.000 years.