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Although the 64.6% satisfaction in Tokyo is relatively high, it is much below the 92.5% of towns and villages. The dissatisfaction rate of the former, 30% is more than four times that of the latter, which is 6.9%. The reasons for satisfaction or dissatisfaction may very, but it should not be ignored that the major factors concern quality of water.

It is generally pointed out that as water resource exploitation approaches its limit, quality of water, as wall as the quality of potable water which involves hygiene aspects such as sterilization, is lowered. In addition, it should be noted that the lack of flexibility in response to water crises, as mentioned below, can cause problems in obtaining the required volume of water in a certain time frame. There is a suggestion that government's willingness to invest in water resource exploitation may be impeded by the substantially lower cost (0.6%) people incur for daily-life water compared to their overall spending as consumers

 

4. Water Crises and Countermeasures

 

Although water resources have been steadily maintained over the long run, per-capita water resources have decreased by 40% in the last half century due to population expansion. According to population growth forecasts, the decrease in per-capita water resource will accelerate further. If we take into consideration the regionally uneven distribution of water in addition to the global environmental changes in recent years, partial water crises will be inevitable even on the assumption that the rate of the current use of global water resource is still 50%. The United Nation's announcement mentioned earlier regarding the crisis is also based on the forecasts that the number of countries suffering shortage of water will increase to 80 from the current 31, viz., an increase by 40% to 2.8 billion people from 500,000.

What conditions cause water crisis? For quantitative depletion, the causes include draught water flow or depletion of ground water due to decrease in water storage, and deterioration of the function of water storage facilities through earthquake or sedimentation.

 

 

 

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