Invest in water: the world’s most valuable resource

The world faces major long-term water supply issues. Yet there is a solution at hand – and investors can profit from it

Aerial view from water barrage
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Water is the most important commodity of all. The human race cannot survive without it. Anthropologist and nature science writer Loren Eiseley has said that “if there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water”. Yet in the UK we take for granted a constant and reliable supply of water whenever we turn on the tap. In some ways, that’s no surprise. Seventy-one per cent of the world’s surface is covered by water, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS), with a total volume of a staggering 333 million cubic miles. Yet nearly 97% of the Earth’s aggregate water supply is contained in oceans and seas, meaning it is far too salty for human consumption, crop growing or most industrial uses except cooling. 

Furthermore, more than 25% of the remaining 3% still has saline elements. The upshot is that only about 2.5% of the planet’s overall water stock is freshwater (defined as having low concentrations of dissolved salts and solids). And more than two-thirds of this 2.5% is contained in glaciers and polar ice caps, notes the USGS, and 30% of it is groundwater (under the Earth’s surface in soil and rock pores and fractures as well as in gravel, sand and silt). In other words, only 1% of global freshwater is actually surface water. Almost 70% of the latter is locked in ground ice and permafrost, with merely the remaining 30% – just 0.0075% of the world’s total water supply – to be found in rivers, lakes, swamps, soil and the atmosphere. In short, fresh, accessible and potable (drinkable) water isn’t as plentiful as it might at first seem. 

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up
Contributor

David J. Stevenson has a long history of investment analysis, becoming a UK fund manager for Oppenheimer UK back in 1983.

Switching his focus across the English Channel in 1986, he managed European funds over many years for Hill Samuel, Cigna UK and Lloyds Bank subsidiary IAI International.

Sandwiched within those roles was a three-year spell as Head of Research at stockbroker BNP Securities.

David became Associate Editor of MoneyWeek in 2008. In 2012, he took over the reins at The Fleet Street Letter, the UK’s longest-running investment bulletin. And in 2015 he became Investment Director of the Strategic Intelligence UK newsletter.

Eschewing retirement prospects, he once again contributes regularly to MoneyWeek.

Having lived through several stock market booms and busts, David is always alert for financial markets’ capacity to spring ‘surprises’.

Investment style-wise, he prefers value stocks to growth companies and is a confirmed contrarian thinker.