the business of water: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/8e42bdc8-0838-11e4-9afc-00144feab7de.html#slide0

Some quotes from the article:

• Since 2011 companies have spent more than $84bn worldwide to improve the way they conserve, manage or obtain water, according to data from Global Water Intelligence, regulatory disclosures and executive interviews with the Financial Times.
• The $550bn global water market – which covers everything from water treatment plants to pipelines – is expanding at about 3.5 per cent a year, says Martin Stuchtey of McKinsey.
• Agriculture accounts for 70 per cent of all water use compared with 22 per cent for industry and just 8 per cent for domestic users, says the UN.
• Just over 97 per cent of the world’s water is in its oceans. Of the 2.5 per cent that is fresh water, almost 70 per cent is locked away in glaciers and ice caps and about 1 per cent is in lakes, rivers and other surface water sources. The remaining 30 per cent is groundwater, some of it so ancient and hard to replace it is known as fossil water.
• India accounts for over 30% of increase in global water withdrawals over the past 15 years.
• By 2030, the global population is expected to have increased from today’s 7bn to 8bn. The global middle class, meanwhile, is likely to have surged from nearly 2bn to 5bn, according to the OECD, largely in fast-growing Asian economies. Like their predecessors in developed countries, they are likely to want a hamburger, not just a bowl of vegetables, and the UN has calculated it takes 2,400 litres of water to produce a hamburger compared with less than 30 litres for a potato or a tomato.
• Energy is a big consumer of water with each shale oil well consuming 2 million gallons of water or more.
• Desalination growing, with 17200 plants today.
• Water use and recycling action critical with Israel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_Israel) and Singapore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_Singapore) having great solutions