Using Figure 2 Suggest the Physical and Human Factors That Might Help to Explain the Global Pattern of Water Stress

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Figure two shows that countries around the equator tend to have low water stress compared to countries in the tropics, which have higher amounts of water stress, in some cases such as in north Africa extreme amounts of water stress. The global pattern of water stress could be due to both physical and human factors. A physical factor which contributes to the pattern of water stress around the globe is where a country is situated, for example Brazil and Indonesia have low water stress as they are near to the equator, where there are regular seasons and rain occurs frequently in the form of storms and monsoons. This provides the country with a plentiful water supply. However in Egypt, the country is mainly dessert. This means that there is little to no rain all year, meaning that it can be difficult to manage the water supply for the country. Countries situated next to other countries which use trans-boundary sources, such as Bangladesh, which is next to India, can also be a physical factor which contributes to high water stress levels, as they often have to share water supply. For example, Bangladesh and India both share water supply from the Ganges, however there have been disputes about the Farakka Dam being built in India which has cut off a lot of the water supply to Bangladesh. Another physical factor is whether the country has space which stores extra water such as aquifer, as this can be something for a country to use if the main water supply does potentially run out. For example Mexico has a low amount of water stress due to having a large aquifer underground, where as Saudi Arabia has a high water stress level because it has no alternative water supply. Climate change is large physical factor which contributes to the pattern of water stress as it can cause climates to become extreme. For example, in Indonesia climate change has increased the amount of
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