Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru

Bengaluru, Feb 12: Bengaluru has been featured among the 11 cities across the world by BBC, which is likely to run out of drinking water.

Experts who were studying the drinking water crisis in Cape Town said that the plight of the drought-hit South African city is just one extreme example of a problem that experts have long been warning about - water scarcity.

Bengaluru may soon face Cape Town’s situation which is struggling for drinking water. The BBC report states, Bengaluru has been bamboozled by the growth of new property developments following its rise as a technological hub. Currently, the civic officials are struggling to manage the city's water and sewage systems.

The report notes that not a single lake in Bengaluru has suitable water for drinking or bathing. The city loses over half of its drinking water to waste due to the city's antiquated plumbing.

Bengaluru water bodies have been subjected to pollution. According to a report in The Guardian, Bengaluru had 285 lakes in the 1970s, the number of which reduced to 194 lakes in 2017. An in-depth inventory of the city's lakes found that 85% had water that could only be used for irrigation and industrial cooling.

The BBC report which comments on the global scarcity of water highlights that over one billion people lack access to water and another 2.7 billion find it scarce for at least one month of the year. A 2014 survey of the world's 500 largest cities estimates that one in four are in a situation of "water stress"

According to UN-endorsed projections, global demand for fresh water will exceed supply by 40% in 2030, thanks to a combination of climate change, human action and population growth.

Apart from Bengaluru, cities such as Sao Paulo, Beijing, Cairo, Jakarta, Moscow, Istanbul, Mexico City, London, Tokyo and Miami are on the verge of water crisis.