Photographs: Stringer/Reuters
As the world celebrated World Water Day on March 22, an US intelligence report said that water scarcity could be the reason for future wars.
The world on Thursday achieved the Millennium Development Goal of reducing the number of people without access to safe drinking water by half.
Interestingly, almost half of the two billion people who have gained access to drinking water since 1990 live in China and India.
(Source: UNDP's progress on drinking water and sanitation 2012 report)
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: Nir Elias/Reuters
Girls play in a deserted boat on a dry lake caused by a lack of water upstream in Zhengzhou, Henan province, China.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: Irada Humbatova/Reuters
A girl collects water from a pond used by animals at El-Ley village, during a drought in Moyale, Ethiopia.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: Jorge Silva/Reuters
A water level indicator is seen at Camatagua water reservoir, south from Caracas, Venezuela.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: Irada Humbatova/Reuters
A boy drinks water from a pond in Bule Duba village, on the outskirts of Moyale, near the edge of Oroma and Somali regions of Ethiopia.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: Amit Dave/Reuters
People gather to get water from a huge well in the village of Natwarghad in Gujarat.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: Stringer/Reuters
A boy leads his cattle to a partially dried-up pond on the outskirts of Yingtan, Jiangxi province, China.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: David Gray/Reuters
A farmer inspects rows of seeds sown after the best April rain in ten years fell across Australia after years of drought.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: David Gray/Reuters
Trees surrounded by dried farmland are seen from the air on a drought-affected farm on the outskirts of the southern Australian city of Melbourne.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: Tami Chappell/Reuters
Resident Julie Hoover (L) and her sister Yvonne Terry walk along the bottom of the spring where water flowed until recently, when the spring ran dry during a drought, in Orme, Tennessee.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: China Daily/Reuters
Floating restaurants stranded in a branch of the Yangtze River in southwestern China's Chongqing municipality during a drought.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: Parth Sanyal/Reuters
Residents of a slum collect drinking water from a tanker at a roadside in Kolkata.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: Thomas Mukoya/Reuters
A Somali refugee child plays with a water bottle in the Kenya-Somalia border town of Liboi, Kenya.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: David Gray/Reuters
Salt-infested dams can be seen in a drought-affected farming area on the outskirts of the Western Australian capital city of Perth.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: Jitendra Prakash/Reuters
Slum dwellers collect drinking water from a submerged hand-pump after heavy rains in Allahabad.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters
The fingers of malnourished one-year-old are pressed against the lips of his mother at an emergency feeding clinic in the town of Tahoua in northwestern Niger, during one of the worst droughts in Niger's living memory.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: Antony Njuguna/Reuters
Goats drink water in the northeastern town of El Wak, close to the Somalia and Kenya border.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: Dado Ruvic/Reuters
The 70-year-old Sunken cemetery is seen after the Jablanicko lake dried up near Jablanica, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
A child holds a bottle of water in Port-au-Prince.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: Stringer/Reuters
A farmer takes water from a dried-up pond on the outskirts of Yingtan, central China's Jiangxi province.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
A resident holds packets of water to sell in downtown Port-au-Prince.
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Photographs: Oswaldo Rivas/Reuters
Villagers walk home after collecting water in La Empanada town near Las Canoas Lake, north of the capital Managua, Nicaragua.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: Dwi Oblo/Reuters
A villager collects water from a well, which was dug from the bottom of a lake that had dried up in Gunung Kidul village, at Yogyakarta in Indonesia's island of Java.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: Thomas Mukoya/Reuters
A newly arrived refugee child drinks at the Baley settlement near the Ifo extension refugee camp in Dadaab, near the Kenya-Somalia border.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: Stringer/Reuters
An engineer collects water level information on the partially dried-up river bed of the Yangtze River in Chongqing municipality, China.
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Thirst for water: Images from around the world
Photographs: Susana Vera/Reuters
A bottle lies on the dried earth of the drought-stricken Entrepenas reservoir in central Spain.
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