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The World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report 2013 placed water scarcity among the top four global risks, in terms of likelihood and greatest impact – ranking ahead of issues such as food shortages, terrorism and climate change. And water scarcity is already constraining the growth plans of many companies that desire to expand in emerging markets.

The automotive leader has a strong track record of water use reductions in its manufacturing operations and an aggressive goal to reduce water use even further – by 30 percent per vehicle by 2015. But many at Ford and a number of its stakeholders (including the company’s Ceres stakeholder advisory team) see growing water competition and scarcity as a potential economic game-changer – with big implications for the auto industry.

But water is critical to a number of manufacturing steps, including vehicle painting, where large volumes of water are traditionally used to rinse cars, ensuring that not a speck of dust ruins that perfect paint job. Water use also can be high in the automotive supply chain, particularly in making raw materials such as steel and aluminum. Ford also has identified that the energy sources used to power its vehicles (gasoline, electric power or biofuels) play an incredibly important role in determining the water footprint of its vehicles, because of the large amounts of water required for fuel production and power generation.

Here are five factors driving the urgent need for better global water efficiency.

1. Population trends translate into bursting demand

The United Nations figures that 1.2 billion people (about one-fifth of the world's population) are challenged by water scarcity

Environmental questions about Canada’s massive tar sands development have long centered on greenhouse gas emissions. Now there are mounting concerns about the huge volumes of water used by the oil industry and the impact on the vast Mackenzie River Basin.