While children in the western world are choosing between Pepsi and Coke-Cola, more than 800,000 children under the age of five die each year as a result of water and sanitation related diseases, in Asia and Africa.

More than 1 in 9 people have no access to safe water. Over 2.5 billion people lack access to water for sanitation.
The simple act of washing hands with soap and water, such a basic and nonchalant act for all of you, will never happen in the lives of about 2.6 billion people.

Water covers about two-thirds of the earth's surface, but most is too salty for use. Only 2.5% of the world’s water is not salty, and two-thirds of that is locked up in the icecaps and glaciers.
Of what is left (0.83%), about 20% is in remote areas (what leaves 0.64% of the available water) and much of the rest arrives at the wrong time and place, as monsoons and floods. Humans can use only 0.08% of all the earth's water. Yet, by 2050 humans’ use is estimated to increase by 55%.

By the year 2025 two-thirds of the world's population will be living in conditions of serious water shortage and more than one forth will be living in conditions of absolute water scarcity. More than one forth will live in a country with chronic lack of water.
2.6 billion people get less than the 50 liters of water a day considered necessary to meet basic drinking, sanitation and cooking needs. In 2050, 5 billion people may be unable to meet the requirement.
By 2030, nearly 4 billion people – 50% of the projected world population-are expected to live in countries that find it difficult or impossible to mobilize enough water to satisfy the food, industrial, and domestic needs of their citizens.

Poor people in the developing world pay on average 12 times more per liter of water than fellow citizens connected to a municipal system.
These poverty-stricken people use less water, most of it is dirty and contaminated.
In some slums surrounding the cities of developing countries, families often have to spend 10% of their income to buy water for household needs.
The population of the Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea for example pay 26 times more than the average UK citizen for a liter of water.
In Sub-Sahara Africa the urban poor pay up to 50 times more for a liter of water than their richer neighbors.
Millions of people have no chance but to drink water that kills them.
"And justice for all”…

If the entire world population consumes water at the rate enjoyed by people from the developed nations, in the year 2025 humans would be using 90% of all fresh water.
That would leave only 10% for all the other living beings.

Humans are so indifferent to the fate of others. What doesn’t directly affect them isn’t worth any attention.
They disregard other humans and their own future, so what are the chances that they would care for nonhuman animals dying of thirst?

Water Footprint of Food

The strongest evidence for the argument that humans thirst each other to death is of course the fact that they still consume animal products, which is cruel from every single aspect, including toward other humans, especially from water shortage perspective.
The following facts don’t seem to impress non-vegan humans:

Useable Water Distribution

The useable water distribution is an outrage:
12% of the world’s population uses 85% of its water. That leaves 15% of the world's water to 88% of the world's Human population.

Asia holds 60% of the world’s population but only 28% of the world’s useable freshwater. Almost 550 million Asians don’t have access to safe water and 2 billion don’t have access to water for sanitation use.

About 319 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa alone don’t have access to safe drinking water.
About 400 million don’t have access to sanitation.
In the rural areas of Africa more than half of the people don’t have access to either of them.

About 50 million people in Latin American areas don’t have access to safe water.
About 110 million don’t have access to water for sanitation.

The United States leads the world at an estimated 100-175 gallons per person per day.
Almost 12.5 times the amount of the African average household that uses 47 liters per person per day.

Nonhuman animals are not even counted.

Water and Poverty

Although humans can use less than 0.08% of all the earth's water, the pollution increases and the amount of usable water decrease.

In developing countries about 90% of all sewage and 70% of all industrial waste are dumped untreated into water sources. In most cases there is no money for water treatment.

Inadequate water supplies are both a cause and an effect of poverty.
The effects of inadequate water supply - diseases, time and energy expended in the daily water collection, high costs of the water collection units and etc. are all exacerbating the poverty trap.

Water Fetching

Inequities in access to safe water, especially in rural areas, force women in developing countries to spend hours every day fetching water, causing an enormous burden on their energy and health.

Millions of people, mostly women, but children too, must make very long journeys, by foot, each day just to obtain their drinking water. To keep her family clean and healthy, a woman needs to fetch 200 liters of water every day.

In addition to traveling such long distances, the women have to wait in line for their turn to collect water. Waiting time can add up to five hours on the journey time.
Some water sources are almost dry for several months of the year and it can take up to an hour for one woman to fill her bucket.
To avoid such long waits many women get up in the middle of the night to walk to the water source when there is no line.

Water Related Diseases

Lack of access to safe water supply and sanitation results in hundreds of millions of cases of water related diseases, and nearly 1 million deaths, every year.
Water contaminated by human, chemical or industrial wastes can cause a variety of communicable diseases through ingestion or physical contact:

Water-borne diseases: caused by the ingestion of water contaminated by human or animal faeces and urine containing pathogenic bacteria or viruses; include cholera, typhoid, amoebic and bacillary dysentery and other diarrhoeal diseases.

Water-washed diseases: caused by poor personal hygiene and skin or eye contact with contaminated water; include scabies, trachoma and flea, lice and tick-borne diseases.

Water-based diseases: caused by parasites found in intermediate organisms living in water; include dracunculiasis, schistosomiasis and other helminths.

Water-related diseases caused by insect vectors which breed in water: include dengue, filariasis, malaria, onchocerciasis, trypanosomiasis and yellow fever.

There are approximately 4 billion cases of diarrhoea each year causing 2.2 million deaths, mostly among children under the age of five.
Intestinal worms infect about 10% of the population of the developing world.
These can be controlled through better sanitation, hygiene and water supply. Intestinal parasitic infections can lead to malnutrition, anemia and diminished growth, depending upon the severity of the infection.

It is estimated that 1.9 million people are blind from trachoma and the population at risk from this disease is approximately 182 million.

In China alone, it is estimated that nearly 30 million people suffer from chronic fluorosis primarily due to exposure to fluoride in drinking-water.

30% of the people who have Japanese encephalitis with clinical symptoms die. Another 30% have permanent brain damage.

More than 200 million people a year are infected with schistosomiasis.
About 20 million of them suffer severe consequences, such as renal failure, kidney failure and bladder cancer.
Around 700 million people, in 74 countries, live in areas where the disease is common. About 85% of them live in Africa.

At any given time half of all people in the developing world are suffering from one or more of the six main diseases associated with water supply and sanitation diarrhoea, ascaris, dracunculiasis, hookworm, schistosomiasis and trachoma.
Although these diseases are about 20% of global diseases burden, they receive only a pinch of the total public and private funds for health research.

Billions of humans lack access to water for sanitation.
Tens of Millions of humans are suffering from water related diseases.
Up to 700 million people will be displaced by water scarcity in the coming years.
In developing countries, as much as 80% of illnesses are linked to poor water and sanitation conditions.

Yet these are the priorities:
It is estimated that the funds that are required to provide universal access to clean water and sanitation, are 114 billion dollars per year.
Currently only one fifth of this amount is spent each year on water system.
World military spending is about 1.6 trillion dollars per year.
Humans spend 70 times more money on weapons than on water.

More frightening comparative costs:
In Europe and the US, $31 billion is spent each year on ice cream.
Worldwide $148 billion is spent annually on alcoholic drinks, $34 billion more than the amount required to ensure water, sanitation and hygiene for all.

And if these are the priorities when it comes to other humans, no reason for activists to expect any better when it comes to other species, and unfortunately every reason to expect a lot worse.