Economic water scarcity is a type of water scarcity caused by a lack of investment in water or insufficient human capacity to satisfy the demand for water

Water

Water is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state . Water also exists in a...

. Symptoms of economic water scarcity include a lack of infrastructure

Infrastructure

Infrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function...

, with people often having to fetch water from rivers or lakes for domestic and agricultural uses. Large parts of Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

 suffer from economic water scarcity; developing water infrastructure there could therefore help to reduce poverty

Poverty

Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...

.

The term was first defined in a wide-ranging 2007 study on the use of water in agriculture

Agriculture

Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...

 over the past 50 years. The study was undertaken by a broad partnership of practitioners, researchers and policymakers, overseen by the International Water Management Institute

International Water Management Institute

The International Water Management Institute is a non-profit research organisation with headquarters in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and offices across Africa and Asia...

 in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

, with the aim of finding out if the world had sufficient water resources to produce food in future for the growing population.

The term physical water scarcity

Physical water scarcity

Physical water scarcity is the situation where there is not enough water to meet all demands, including that needed for ecosystems to function effectively. Arid regions frequently suffer from physical water scarcity. It also occurs where water seems abundant but where resources are over-committed...

 was used by the study to define situations where there is not enough water to meet all demands, including that needed for ecosystem

Ecosystem

An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....

s to function effectively.