Drought or deluge?

How will water issues play for investors? As global demand rises and pressures on water resources increase, will water be the next oil?

Water is one of our most critical resources - it is life-sustaining and irreplaceable. And although water is the Earth's most abundant resource, most of it is not readily available for human use, as 97% of it is seawater and 2.5% is frozen in Antarctica, the Arctic and in glaciers. People must therefore rely on the tiny percentage of the world's water that is located in underground aquifers, lakes, human-made storage facilities (reservoirs) and rivers, and that falls as rain for all their freshwater needs. Global demand for water is rising dramatically, driven by global population growth ...