Water Needs and Their Evolution

1 WATER CONSUMPTION
The annual consumption in France is approximately 35 billion cubic meters, 6 billion of
which are for domestic needs. 7 billion are provided by groundwater, 50% of which is for the
drinking water supply.
The all-purpose per capita consumption varies greatly by country, between 6,000 m3 per
year for the United States and 7 m3 per year for countries in the Sahel. The average is around
600 m3 per year per person.
The global consumption doubles every twenty years. In 2025 the world population is
projected to reach 8 billion people, yet today around 25% of the planet’s inhabitants do not have
access to potable water. The mediumterm outlook is therefore highly worrisome.
The main uses of water, and in part of groundwater, are as follow:
• domestic uses:
- dietary needs: drinking, washing and cooking of food;
- household needs: sanitation, toilet flushing, heating, washing of laundry and dishes;
- amenities: watering gardens, washing cars, filling pools;
• collective and public uses:
- fire protection;
- street cleaning;
- filling of pools and decorative basins;
- watering public parks, athletic fi elds, and golf courses;
• agricultural uses:
- irrigation of fi elds,
- livestock farming and drinking water for animals;

• industrial uses:
- hydroelectric production;
- use in the production, conservation, and functioning of many manufactured products;
- cooling of production equipment (thermoelectric plants, refrigerated plants, various factories);
- energy production for heating and air conditioning (heat pumps, cooling towers);
- washing of material (quarries, gravel pits), of laundry (industrial operations), or vehicles.
2 DOMESTIC USES AND AGRICULTURE
2.1 Drinking water supply
The minimum vital needs of a human, drinking, cooking, sanitation are approximately 10
L per day per person. Domestic consumption today is around 140 L per day per person in France.
The addition of urban cleaning water brings that number up to 250 L per day per person. This
consumption varies with cultural habits and with wealth. It can reach 400 L per day per person in
some large cities in the United States; conversely, it is below 30 L per day per person in many
African cities. Increasing quality of life is thus accompanied by a considerable increase in water
consumption.
In France, the water extracted for the drinking water supply is 60% from groundwater
and 40% from surface water.
Thankfully, the increase in consumption in developed countries is now slowing. For
example, in France, an increase of almost 2% per year from 1950 to 1970 went to 0.8% per year
from 1970 to 1985, to reach 0.4% per year since 1985. The increasing price of water, which has
reached the equivalent of one month of a minimum wage salary for a French household, and an
increased awareness of environmental problems explain this trend. The next predictable step will
therefore be the search for better quality. The situation becomes dramatic in developing
countries, where an increase in untreated wastewater is accompanied by the decrease in quality
of potable resources.
2.2 Urban uses
Aside from purely domestic uses, city-dwellers also use water for street cleaning, commerce,
craftsmanship, and sewer maintenance. This consumption reaches approximately 100 L per
day per person in Paris. Although some cities have a parallel pipe network for untreated
water, in most cases, street cleaning and the watering of gardens use treated drinking
water. These needs are diffi cult to reduce, and as cities continue to increase
in size, this portion of water use will increase in the future.
2.3 Agriculture
Agricultural uses make up the largest portion of the global water consumption. The
production of 1 kg of fl our requires 500 L of water.
It is diffi cult to know the proportion of water used for agriculture
as part of the water returns back to the aquifers by infi ltration, but an
estimate is that agricultural needs make up 70% of the water consumption
in France, and 90% of that goes to irrigation. Approximately 20% comes
from groundwater.
In arid countries, more effi cient irrigation techniques (drip irrigation
in Israel) decrease the percentage of water used for agriculture. Studies
are done in order to encourage the development of cultures with a greater
added value, such as greenhouse tomatoes instead of wheat (Morocco).