In regions of water scarcity the water resources are probably already degraded, or subjected to processes of degradation in both quantity and quality, which adds to the shortage of water.

Approximately 75% of the poor work and live in rural areas; 60% are expected to do so in 2020 and 50% in 2035, due to increasing urbanization.

The lack of water does not allow industrial, urban and tourism development to proceed without restrictions on water uses and allocation policies for other user sectors, particularly agriculture.

1,800 million people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity by 2025, and two-thirds of the world population could be under stress conditions.

An FAO/UNEP assessment of land degradation in Africa suggests that large areas of countries north of the equator suffer from serious desertification problems. For example, the desert is said to be expanding at an annual rate of 5 km in the semi-arid areas of West Africa.

Over 40% of the world’s population resides within internationally shared river basins.

More than 80% of sewage in developing countries is discharged untreated, polluting rivers, lakes and coastal areas.

The United Nations expect that 3,338 millions people (46.3%) will live in rural areas for the year 2015.

Existing levels of rural water supply coverage are relatively high compared to rural sanitation coverage.

Basins shared by two or more nations account for approximately 60% of the world’s river flow.

In many places of the world, a staggering 30 to 40% of water or more goes unaccounted for due to water leakages in pipes and canals and illegal tapping.

Some of the world's largest rivers, including the Amazon, Orinoco, Ganges-Brahmaputra, Mekong, Niger and Congo, are located in the humid tropics.

The humid tropics encircle the Earth's equator and extend over 2,000 Km to the north and to the south, roughly paralleling the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer.

70% of the world's drylands (excluding hyper-arid deserts), or some 3,600 million hectares, are degraded.

While the ten-year anniversary of the Watercourses Convention passed in May 2007, only 16 nations have ratified the Convention. For the Convention to enter into force, 35 are needed.

The World Health Organization estimates the total annual cost of meeting the 2015 Millennium Development Goal target for sanitation at just over $9.5 billion.

Natural arsenic pollution of drinking water is now considered a global threat with as many as 140 million people affected in 70 countries on all continents.

In Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, nearly 1 billion people in rural areas have no access to improved water supplies and sanitation facilities.

Leakage (loss) rates of 50% are not uncommon in urban distribution systems – in rural distribution systems, the leakage rates increase even more.

Sanitation coverage in rural areas is less than half of that in urban locations and 80% of those lacking adequate sanitation (2 billion people) live in rural areas - some 1.3 billion in China and India alone.

In 2001, it was estimated that some 12 million refugees and 5 million ‘internally displaced persons’ were forced to settle in resource-scarce areas, putting further pressure on people, water and the environment.

Because of the absence of clean and private sanitation facilities in schools, 10% of school-age girls in Africa do not attend school during menstruation or drop out at puberty.

70% of the world's blind are women who have been infected, directly or through their children, with trachoma, a blinding bacterial eye infection occurring in communities with limited access to water.

At least 50% of the world's food is grown by women farmers and it amounts to 80% in some African countries.

Malaria is Africa's leading cause of mortality for children under the age of five (20%). This disease kills an African child every 30 seconds.