Climate change can also be expected to have serious consequences on water resources. Melting glaciers, higher intensity and more variable rainfall events, and increasing temperatures will contribute to increased inland flooding, water scarcity and decreasing water quality. Overall, the greatest human requirement for freshwater resources is for crop irrigation, particularly for farming in arid regions and in the great paddy fields of Asia. In South Asia, hundreds of millions of people depend on perennial rivers such as the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra –all fed by the unique water reservoir formed by the 16,000 Himalayan glaciers. Current trends in glacial melt suggest that the low flows will be.
