Countries in Asia, including India, may face severe water shortage by 2050 due to rising economic activity, growing populations and climate change, MIT scientists have warned.

• There is a “high risk of severe water stress” in much of an area that is home to roughly half the world’s population, scientists said.
• Having run a large number of simulations of future scenarios, the researchers found that the median amounts of projected growth and climate change in the next 35 years in Asia would lead to about 1 billion more people becoming “water-stressed” compared to today.
• While climate change is expected to have serious effects on the water supply in many parts of the world, the study underscores the extent to which industrial expansion and population growth may by themselves exacerbate water-access problems.
• To conduct the study, the scientists built upon an existing model developed previously at MIT, the Integrated Global Systems Model (IGSM), which contains probabilistic projections of population growth, economic expansion, climate, and carbon emissions from human activity.
• They then linked the IGSM model to detailed models of water use for a large portion of Asia encompassing China, India, and many smaller nations.
• The study was published in the journal PLOS One.