Water Scarcity — Definition

Definition

Water scarcity is a condition in which available, usable water is insufficient to meet relevant needs at a particular place and time. It can arise from limited physical supply, degraded quality, excessive demand or inadequate infrastructure and access.

It is therefore not synonymous with low annual rainfall. A locality can experience a short seasonal shortage, a persistent imbalance between use and renewal, or unequal access despite an adequate aggregate supply.

Diagnosing scarcity requires specifying whose needs are unmet, which source or service is constrained and over what period. Those distinctions determine whether the response should address demand, storage, quality, distribution or the underlying resource balance.