Water

Global Fresh Water Supplies

Today, many countries are net importers of fresh water and water-based products like foods that take vast amounts of water to grow and produce—meat, nuts, and dairy products, for instance.

For example, 1 kilogram of beef takes about 15,000 liters of fresh water to produce.

Water-poor countries are importing food and buying water from water-rich countries, receiving it through pipes and tankers.

Places like North Africa, the Middle East, Mexico, Japan, and most of Europe are experiencing extreme water shortages right now.

Much of the western and southern United States are currently in extreme drought situations.

Water Is Going To Be The Next Global Oil Rush

The CIA reports that, like the oil empires of the 20th century, there will be water empires in the 21st century.

Three countries control the lion's share of the global water reserves. They will form the basis of the future freshwater equivalent of OPEC, which controls global oil supplies today.

The situation in the United States and Eurasia looks desperate.

But the billionaires are already getting richer from this crisis.

Business magnate T. Boone Pickens bought up hundreds of thousands of U.S. acres with freshwater rights in the 1990s with profits he made by selling oil wells. In 2011, he sold the water rights for US$103 million.

Michael Burry, financial seer of "The Big Short" fame, is investing heavily in land with water rights, too.


The CIA estimates that Brazil, Russia, and Canada have more renewable freshwater resources than all of Europe, Australia, Africa, the United States, China, and India combined.


These three countries will control the global water market by 2050.

The Problem With Water

Some 97.5% of all the water on the planet is undrinkable salt water, which takes an extraordinary amount of energy to desalinate.
Only 0.3% of the freshwater on Earth is in surface lakes and rivers. The rest is locked in glaciers or in shallow groundwater aquifers and in "fossil water" deposits in aquifers deep underground.
The shallow aquifer water is semi-renewable and accessible via shallow well digging. However, deep fossil aquifers are considered non-renewable because they're pumped dry in the space of decades and take millennia to replenish.
Today, much of the water used globally comes from pumping fossil aquifers. When they run dry, the countries reliant on them will become chaotic.

Studies show that even the most efficient desalination plants, like the ones used in Saudi Arabia and Israel, still cost twice as much to supply water when compared to buying fresh water from water-rich countries using pipelines or ocean tankers.

Exhaustion of groundwater sources will cause global food production to decline during the same time period that the global population is expected to go from 7 billion to 10.5 billion.


Possible Solutions

Agriculture accounts for 70% of the freshwater used by humanity. Modern irrigation technology will reduce our usage, but as water-poor countries pump their ground water aquifers dry, their ability to grow enough food to sustain themselves, even with more efficient irrigation technology, will continue to fail.

Massive desalination plants like the Ras Al-Khair plant in Saudi Arabia can provide water to millions every day, but these cost billions to construct and are energy hungry.

Currently, the only viable option is to transport water via pipelines from water-rich areas to water-starved areas.

Beijing relies mostly on ground water, pumping aquifers deep underground... but as that option runs out, it's building a 1,000-kilometer pipe from the Quan River at a cost of US$80 billion.


Who Are The Winners In This Scenario?


The countries with the largest renewable water reserves are:

To give you an idea of how much water this is, the entire world pumps about 800 cubic kilometers of groundwater per year.


The CIA estimates that Brazil, Russia, and Canada have more renewable freshwater resources than all of Europe, Australia, Africa, the United States, China, and India combined.


These three countries will control the global water market by 2050.


When any small group of countries have a virtual monopoly on a resource vital to global survival, I recommend investing in them, however...


Canada has recently banned all foreigners from buying property there in an effort to prevent its already massively overinflated property bubble from worsening.


Russia, with its habit of nationalizing foreign-owned property, dreadful human rights record, and propensity for throwing oligarchs and businessmen out of hotel windows, probably won't be a place where Westerners can safely invest for the next 50 years, if ever.


Brazil is another story...


It controls an incredible 20% of global renewable freshwater reserves.


It also has undervalued real estate, is friendly to foreign investors, and has a huge and diversified economy that bodes well for short- and medium-term economic growth, even before it becomes the world's first water empire.


Stay Tuned