Assignment 02 Object Info Andigoni Christou & Aleyne Felicio DART 498 | 2014-09-25

Will Water Become the Chief Commodity of the 21st Century? Access to water is one of the pressing global issues of the 21st century. As our global population grows and becomes wealthier, the demand for water will greatly increase. It has been estimated that the world's population currently uses 54% of all accessible fresh water owing in rivers and streams. At projected rates of population growth humanity could use more than 70% of all accessible fresh water by 2025. Already over a quarter of the world's people do not have safe water to drink or proper sanitation. Three significant factors impact negatively on the local availability of freshwater. Firstly, climate change induced glacier shrinkage is decreasing the availability of glacial water. Secondly, growing populations and rapid urbanisation raise water demand due to higher consumption patterns. Thirdly, modern lifestyles promote activities such as high meat consumption that result in the use of large amounts of freshwater. The same is true of some traditional cultures with rice production. So while we face ever-growing demand for water on the one hand, we face severe supply constraints on the other. Research conducted by the World Resources Institute has found that 41% of the world’s population or 2.3 billion people live in areas subject to frequent water shortages. These are denied as water stressed areas, where per capita water supply is below 1,700 m3 (1,700,000 litres) per year. the original news article source: http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/water-prospects-in-the-21st-century

WASTE DEMAND CONSUMPTION SUPPLY CONTRAINTS

Summary The goal for this assignment is to represent a news story through an object. We chose an article related to the research that point out that we will run out of fresh water in the near future. We’ve read several articles that indicate that factors such pollution, the increase in population, climate change and wastefulness will lead to a lack of clear water in the near future. The demand for fresh water has doubled every 21 years. We are currently using 54% of all accessible fresh water on the planet. With the increase of the population, some scientists claim that by 2025 we’ll be using approximately 70% of all fresh water available. With this information on hand, we started sketching symbols related to water such as buckets and faucets. Since most of the population drinks water from the faucet, we thought that this would be an interesting element to use. We wanted to show the difference between our water situation now and the one we will have in the future if nothing is done to prevent water waste. To illustrate the present and future, we decided to use two globes. One would have water coming out of the faucet and the other one would have sand. The sand represents the desert and dryness that our planet will show if there’s no more water available. To us, these two objects synthetize the articles in a clear manner how the information was interpreted

inspiration / influence for design / strategy

photo documented results