This is the inquiry with me, Tanya Beckett, one question, four expert witnesses and an answer.

In the summer of 2021, thousands of protesters in Iran take to the streets in cities and towns amid the country's deepening water crisis.

More than 100 cities throughout the country have introduced some form of water rationing or face disruptions.

The water shortages are being blamed on decades of poor management, lack of investment and the effects of climate change.

But Iran's problems are common to many regions and they're also not new.

Global water demand has increased sixfold over the past 100 years.

Water scarcity is an issue for a quarter of the world's population, areas on every continent are affected.

This week on the inquiry, we're asking, are we running out of water?

Part 1. A growing problem.

It's a fairly dire picture and most people are really unaware of the overall scope of the water problems that we face as a planet.

Our first expert witness is James Family Eti.

He's Executive Director at the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.

James moved to Canada in 2018. His previous job was as water scientist for US Space Agency NASA in California.

The year he left California, over 100 people in the state lost their lives to wildfires.

We left literally with the fires chasing us out of California and the smoke trailing us all the way across the prairies to Saskatchewan.

And to return after COVID to visit our family down here three years later to find the situation the same or worse is really really distressing.

More devastating wildfires struck a year after James left in 2019.

In 2020, there was the worst wildfire in California's history. And in 2021, they struck again.

So the way I think about California is that it suffers from chronic water scarcity. And what I mean by that is that it's a region that just doesn't have enough water to do all the things that it wants to do.

And that's primarily, you know, water for people, water for the environment, but largely water to grow food.

California produces over a third of America's vegetables and two thirds of its fruits and nuts.

This despite the fact that rainfall is only a third of the United States national average.

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