Although rural populations in Asia are projected to remain stable over the next 20 years, urban populations are likely to increase by 60% before 2025, which affect prospects for water scarcity.

In most urban public water systems charges often barely cover the recurrent costs of operation and maintenance, leaving little or no funds to recover the capital costs of modernization and expansion. A survey of such systems in 132 cities in high-, middle and low-income countries found that 39% did not recover even their operation and maintenance costs (true of 100% of cities in South-East Asia and the Maghreb) .

Water plays a central role in many religions and beliefs around the world. Source of life, it represents (re)birth. Water cleans the body, and by extension purifies it, and these two main qualities confer a highly symbolic - even sacred - status to water. Water is therefore a key element in ceremonies and religious rites.

Industrial discharge returned without treatment has high organic content, leading to rapid growth of algae, bacteria and slime, oxygen-depleted water, and thermal pollution. Discharge can affect a relatively large volume of water and have numerous impacts on human health. Polluted water may affect fishing grounds, irrigated lands, municipalities located downstream, bathing water and can have significant transboundary effects.

Reducing rural poverty requires better allocation and distribution of water to increase the output of staples. Rice and horticulture create much employment income for the poor, but are heavy users of water.

The production of 1 kilogram of rice requires 3,000 litres of water.

Approximately 70% of all available water is used for irrigation.

Because 70% of the Earth is covered by water, it is called the 'Blue Planet'. Yet only 2.5% of the world's water is freshwater, while 97.5% is oceans. Only 0.3% of the world's freshwater is available from rivers, lakes and reservoirs; 30% is groundwater, while the rest is stored in distant glaciers, ice sheets, and mountainous areas - all places that we can hardly access.

At the start of the twenty-first century, agriculture is using a global average of 70% of all water withdrawals from rivers, lakes and aquifers. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) anticipates a net expansion of irrigated land of some 45 million hectares in ninety-three developing countries (to a total of 242 million hectares in 2030) and projects that agricultural water withdrawals will increase by some 14% from 2000 to 2030 to meet future food production needs.

Poor drainage and irrigation practices have led to waterlogging and salinization of about 10% of the world's irrigated lands, thereby reducing productivity.

Continued rising water levels are set to affect numerous people living on or around the Mekong River in multiple countries in Asia.

One third of the world’s land surface is covered by dryland ecosystems. These areas are very fragile and react strongly to inappropriate land use.

The range of salinity means that animals living in estuaries must be capable of surviving in both high and low salinities. The meeting of seawater and freshwater means that a range of different temperatures, water levels, currents and levels of oxygen are also possible and must be tolerated for survival.

Desertification is the degradation of drylands. It involves the loss of biological or economic productivity and complexity in croplands, pastures and woodlands. It is due mainly to climate variability and unsustainable human activities.

In several cities of the developing world, demand for bottled water often stems from the fact that municipal water supplies – if available at all – fail to meet basic criteria for drinking water quality. But companies manufacturing bottled water are also generating large revenues in developed countries.

More than half of the world's animal and plant species live in an aquatic environment.

Religious water is never neutral and passive. It is considered to have powers and capacities to transform this world, annihilate sins and create holiness. Water carries away pollution and purifies both in a physical and symbolical sense. Water is a living and spiritual matter, working as a mediator between humans and gods. It often represents the border between this world and the other.

In Africa alone, 36 countries are affected by desertification or by land degradation, and an estimated 75% of the continent's farmland is rapidly losing the basic nutrients needed to grow crops.

An average golf course in a tropical country such as Thailand needs 1500 kg of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides per year and uses as much water as 60,000 rural villagers. Eutrophication causes these harmful chemicals to enter the Mekong River, which has disastrous consequences.

In humid parts of the world, mountains provide 30% to 60% of the freshwater downstream. In semi-arid and arid environments, they provide 70% to 95%.

The provision of water and sanitation has grown much more slowly than population growth in urban settings in most low-income and many middle-income nations.

The processes of evaporation and transpiration (evapotranspiration) are closely linked to the water found in soil moisture; these processes act as driving forces on water transferred in the hydrological cycle. Movement through soil and vegetation is large and accounts for 62% of annual globally renewable freshwater.

The processes of evaporation and transpiration (evapotranspiration) are closely linked to the water found in soil moisture; these processes act as driving forces on water transferred in the hydrological cycle.