Water - the next reason for conflict?

[Grumpy Grandpa]

An odd wee thought wandered through my head recently about the amount of water available to us on planet Earth and how much of that is being used up by our rate of procreation, so I had a bit of a Google...

Of all the water available, only 3% of it is fresh water. Of that 3%, around 70% of it is held in polar ice and glaciers and that's increasingly (for whatever reason,) melting into the sea, making it unavailable for consumption without distillation. (We'll leave aside the effect of all that fresh water in the North Atlantic on ocean conveyor currents for now...)

Of the rest, that which is in aquifers is being depleted at an alarming rate, including the deep (fossil and nonreplenishable,) aquifers, which are being reduced by levels of multiple metres per year. For example, in southern India, Coca-Cola draws 3.75 litres of water from the aquifer for each 1 litre of product it makes.

Consider then that on top of that, humans are made up of about 60% water and we are reproducing at an almost exponential rate (maybe a wee bit of an exaggeration but you get my drift,) so how long does it take until there simply isn't enough left? (I'm not attempting to answer that one, by the way...)

So - given that we need water a whole lot more than we need oil, how long might it be before water provides the next reason for conflict...?