“Peter Gleick, one of the co-founders of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, has developed a formula for determining how much water people need each day to survive. While most minimum daily water targets set by organizations like the World Health Organization consider only drinking and sanitation, Gleick’s numbers include two other basic needs: bathing and cooking. Gleick came up with a figure of 50 liters per day (lpd) as the amount of water each individual requires to meet a minimum quality of life.
The breakdown is:
5 lpd for drinking
10 lpd for cooking
15 lpd for bathing
20 lpd for sanitation
1/3 of the world’s population lives below the minimum water level. Some are quite a bit below. The worst conditions are in Haiti…where people subsist on an average of 3 liters per day. They are dying of thirst and living in unhygienic squalor.”
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