Our body is composed of nearly 70% water; water is one commodity that we cannot do without and the fact that water is a limited resource makes it inherently the most valuable commodity on our planet. It has been theorized that some of the future wars would be fought over wars and there are indications that this is already happening. Several states, cities and nations are at loggerheads over water sharing arrangements and this tendency to fight over this valuable commodity is all set to intensify over the next few years.
Does this bring us to the question of water itself? Why is it that we require water in order to survive? Well, essentially life first originated in water and we have all descended from those life forms that traversed our primitive oceans. Our bodies require us to consume a certain amount of water on a daily basis and this water both serves to replenish our body with valuable minerals as well as to help cool our body down.
Without this elixir of life, our body will start failing us as most of our organs shut down; this is why it is essential that we drink the basic requirement of water daily. But the question of how water got to our planet still remains wide open with half the scientific community suggesting that large-scale bombardment by various asteroids led to the formation of water bodies on our planet. The other school of thought suggests that the earth contains a large reservoir of water and was naturally formed during the formation of the planet. But this does not correlate with the fact that early earth would have been hot but there has been no sudden spike in the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. This only goes on to show that we have not yet heard the last word on how earth got its water.
From marine life to all flora and fauna on earth, water is necessary for basic survival; since our bodies consist mostly of water, it stands to reason that all species will need to consume a certain amount of water each day in order to survive. Modern society faces a challenge today, as a result of lack of viable drinking bodies, drying of stream and river bodies, ecological impact as a result of development, deforestation – all of which has certainly led to straining our existing water resources. This is why we need to take effective measures to protect our existing water bodies and preserve all life, which depends on this water for its daily survival.
Water is a limited resource; eventually, there will come a point when all water on earth would have either become undrinkable or have evaporated away; but it is not all a picture of doom and gloom. NASA has already identified many bodies in our own solar system which contain large reservoirs of water. So it is not impossible to imagine a scenario in the future where we can send spaceships to other planets to mine the same for water and other invaluable resources.
