Did you know that more than one in six people worldwide – 894 million – don’t have access necessary amount of safe freshwater needed to meet their basic daily needs for drinking, cooking, and cleaning?

With World Water Day coming up on March 22, 2012, here are 10 Water Scarcity Facts everyone good steward should be aware of from the World Heath Organization:

1. Water scarcity occurs even in areas where there is plenty of rainfall or freshwater.
2. Water scarcity affects one in three people on every continent of the globe.
3. Almost 1/5 of the world’s population (about 1.2 billion people) live in areas where the water is physically scarce.
4. Water scarcity forces people to rely on unsafe sources of drinking water.
5. Poor water quality can increase the risk of such diarrhoeal diseases and other water-borne infections.
6. Water scarcity encourages people to store water in their homes providing breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
7. Water scarcity underscores the need for better water management.
8. A lack of water has driven up the use of wastewater for agricultural production in poor urban and rural communities.
9. Millennium Development Goal #7, target 10 aims to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. Water scarcity could threaten progress to reach this target.
10. Water is an essential resource to sustain life.

You can help by supporting organizations on the front line such as Water.org or Charity Water.