Pumping Pressure

Globally, agriculture uses more than 70 percent of the fresh water drawn from lakes, rivers and underground reserves. But with a rising population and growing water demand, Earth Report asks whether there will be enough fresh water to grow sufficient food, let alone provide enough to drink. While underground reserves are being pumped dry, Earth Report finds that new ways to catch rainfall can provide a clever antidote to all the talk of a water crisis.

Demands for water are placing enormous pressure on river basins and groundwater reserves worldwide as countries struggle to develop their economies.

Changing Currents journeys to South Africa and Gujarat in India to ask:

How can the pressure to keep on pumping be managed for a sustainable future?

How easy is it to achieve truly integrated water resources management which will really account for the needs of the poor?

Families in former homeland areas around Groblersdall and the Schoeman Orange farm fetch their water from a leaking pipe left over from the apartheid era.

80% of available freshwater is used to grow food; 85% of the world's food comes from irrigated land, and 97% of all available freshwater lies beneath the earth's surface. Dammed rivers, lakes, seas and wetlands are being sucked dry and we are quietly pumping our precious groundwater reserves to the point of collapse.

Pumping pumping pumping - sucking the earth dry and leaving a poisonous puddle. But working out how to manage this precious resource is a very political process.

Tubewell drilling in Gujarat, India. As water levels fall, farmers are drilling deeper and deeper. Experts predict that the whole area could soon be reduced to a virtual desert.

Changing Currents explores the implications of South Africa's National Water Act for sustainable and equitable development in the Olifants River Basin and finds Gujarat on the brink of environmental collapse through overextraction of groundwater. But inspired people and ingenious solutions can be found in every corner of the globe.