The main impacts of water shortage are health, education, hunger and poverty. Because of the poor quality of water people are forced to drink low quality water from the flowing streams. Most of the streams are contaminated, courtesy human beings. Because of the contamination of water there are many water-borne diseases in many parts of the world and people even die because of this. The shortage of water prevents the water from flowing and this helps the mosquitoes and other deadly insect to breed on sill dirty water. This causes the deadly malaria and other infections.
Sanitation Problems
The shortage of water or quality water creates major sanitation problems. Since there is shortage of water, local restaurants, clinics, and other public places of convenience and similar places are forced to use little water for cleaning. This is like compromising the health of the staff and public who use the facilities. It is quite interesting how water and education is connected. In most of the places it is the children who have to collect water for the family and most of places they have to walk miles to fetch water. The children spend half of their time fetching water for the family and where is the time for them to go to school?
In some countries women and girls are not allowed to go to school especially is underdeveloped countries. A lot of water is needed to grow food and care for animals. 70% of the water is sued for agriculture and irrigation and only 10% is sued for domestic use. If the quantity of water needed for irrigation is reduced farming and crops will have lower yields. It is dangerous for the human beings and animals resulting in hunger and thirst. Wild animals are already finding it difficult to cope up with the life in the forest and are straying into places where human habitation.
Poverty
Poverty is other major problem faced when there is shortage of water. Availability of quality water is important to economic prosperity and better living standards. Manufacturing activities, commercial farms and mining processes all need a lot of water to prosper. Lack of water will affect the economic activities and people will be forced to face the poverty. Most of the business establishments like restaurants, hotels and shopping places need water to keep the premises clean and attract customers. Without water small businesses or major global industries cannot function.
Poor quality water quality or water shortage means higher costs for all kinds of businesses which is going to be high cost for the end consumer. It is major threat to the whole community and will have a negative impact on the competitiveness of the people. There will be zero growth and when there is no growth there will not be job opportunities. If the different water source is not managed properly water shortage will directly affect all the living creature and human beings. The major problem faced by people is that everyone takes water for granted and is not thinking about the consequences.