Water shortage
(noun)
Water is less available due to climate change, pollution, or overuse.
Examples of Water shortage in the following topics:
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River Valley Civilizations
- A hydraulic empire (also known as hydraulic despotism, or water monopoly empire) is a social or governmental structure which maintains power through exclusive control over water access.
- Access to water is still crucial to modern civilizations; water scarcity affects more than 2.8 billion people globally.
- Water stress is the term used to describe difficulty in finding fresh water or the depletion of available water sources.
- Water shortage is the term used when water is less available due to climate change, pollution, or overuse.
- Water crisis is the term used when there is not enough fresh, clean water to meet local demand.
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Great Zimbabwe
- Causes for the decline and ultimate abandonment of the city of Great Zimbabwe have been suggested as due to a decline in trade compared to sites further north, the exhaustion of the gold mines, political instability and famine and water shortages induced by climatic change.
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The Black Death
- Christians accused Jews of poisoning public water supplies in an effort to ruin European civilization.
- The shortage of priests opened new opportunities for lay women to assume more extensive and more important service roles in the local parish.
- Severe depopulation and migration of the village to cities caused an acute shortage of agricultural laborers.
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The Akkadian Empire
- There was often a surplus of agriculture but shortages of other goods, like metal ore, timber, and building stone.
- Attempts to control access to water led to increased political instability; meanwhile, severe depopulation occurred.
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Akkadian Government, Culture, and Economy
- The water table in this region was very high and replenished regularly—by winter storms in the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates from October to March and from snow-melt from March to July.
- Farmers were recruited into regiments for this work from August to October — a period of food shortage — under the control of city temple authorities.
- Nomadic Amorites from the northwest would pasture their flocks of sheep and goats to graze on the stubble watered from the river and irrigation canals.
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The Old Kingdom
- The Old Kingdom, spanning the Third to Sixth Dynasties of Egypt (2686-2181 BCE), saw the prolific construction of pyramids but declined due to civil instability, resource shortages, and a drop in precipitation.
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Charlemagne's Reforms
- There were strong pragmatic reasons for this abandonment of a gold standard, notably a shortage of gold itself.
- The gold shortage was a direct consequence of the conclusion of peace with Byzantium, which resulted in ceding Venice and Sicily to the East and losing their trade routes to Africa.
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Italian Politics
- The resulting labour shortage increased wages and the reduced population was therefore much wealthier, better fed, and, significantly, had more surplus money to spend on luxury goods.
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Spanish Exploration
- This caused labor shortages for plantations and public works and so the colonists initiated the Atlantic slave trade.
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Prussia Under Frederick the Great
- Many other rulers soon followed the steps of Frederick in reforming their own currencies, which resulted in a shortage of ready money, thus lowering prices.