2. Industrialization and Water Resource
The age of stable food supply through settled agriculture is said to have lasted for some 10,000 years, while the population has grown from some 5 million to 500 million. It was, however, industrialization starting in the 17th century that led population growth to the present drastic level, multiplying the number by ten times in a mere few several hundred years. The rate of growth is even accelerating, and the world population, as forecast by the United Nations, will likely reach 10 billion in the mid 21st century, up from 6 billion in the late 20th century.
Needless to say, the development of agriculture, with its increased capability to feed the species, has supported this population growth. Nonetheless, as mentioned in the later chapters, industrialization is beginning to have an influence on water resources, although not to the extent that agriculture does. The question as to the way for sustainable industrial growth, therefore, has been raised. Let us view the impact industrialization has on water resource in the following section.
The East Asia-Pacific region, which had been logging behind world industrialization, started to achieve rapid economic growth on the basis of industrialization in the latter half 20th century as the countries were freed from the bonds of colonization. The conversion of ratio of agriculture to non-agriculture (i.e., the rate of output to the national economy from the manufacturing sector exceeding that from agriculture) was seen in Korea in the 1970s, and then in Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia in the 1980s, despite the time loss during the transition of policies from production of substitutes for imported goods in the 1960s to promotion of exports in the 1970s. China, after a delay in starting, is no longer an exception.
The influence of such industrialization on water resource has also been remarkable. The manufacturing sector's share of water consumption (1995) was 23% in the leading area, Europe, being a third that of agriculture, but was still only 9% in the whole of Asia.
