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Accounting of Africa’s water reveals a management gap
Xu Wang is in the State Key Laboratory of Urban-rural Water Resources and Environment, School of Ecology and Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, Shenzhen 518055, China.
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The water cycle is global, yet its accounting is not. Rain, rivers and underground water cross borders freely, but water use is reported by country. The budget for the world’s total usage is therefore only as reliable as the weakest report. When a country cannot measure usage, its water is lost from global accounting — and with it, any claim to a fair share.
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