That gulping sound you hear is the world’s population thirstily quaffing the last drops from Earth’s aquifers. It’s inconceivable if you live in rainy old Blighty or Bergen, but fresh water could become the luxury item of the future. Wallpaper*’s Eric Enno Tamm plunges into the crises surrounding the plant’s splashiest resource.

No matter how you look at those two handsome hydrogens in bondage with that lonesome oxygen, the menage-a-trois molecule called water has brought us an almost infinite supply of refreshment and fun. We love it in all its forms – in its gaseous state during our sensuous Helsinki sauna sessions; as white, velvety snow on the slopes of Mont Blanc and as that thirst-quenching liquid we so love to drink, douse and dip into. In fact, H2O flows through every facet (and faucet) of ours lives.

Yet when you distill all the facts, the reality is that there isn’t that much drinkable water in the world. About 97.5 per cent is too salty to consume, a point memorably made by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ancient mariner. About two-thirds of the remainder is frozen in the polar caps or glaciers. Of the staff falling from the sky as part of the hydrological cycle, about 75 per cent pours down in floods and monsoons or drenches places too remote for us to get to. This all boils down to one dry little fact with huge consequences: less than 0.08 of one percent of total water in the world is actually available for drinking.

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