HEBRON--For five years, Eada Hadalin has been digging into solid rock with nothing more than a pick-axe and one thing in mind: a sip of cold water for her parched throat. The 63-year-old Bedouin woman begins digging the well near her tent daily at dawn. She gives the same answer whenever asked why she is going to all the trouble. "Because I'm thirsty."

Her ritual is symbolic of the plight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, for whom finding water has become an obsession. Sparse winter rainfall--a third of the average amount, the worst in 60 years--has left the Holy Land in severe drought. Palestinians, though water-thrifty, are especially hard hit. Palestinian villagers find themselves unable to bathe their children while nearby Jewish settlers frolic in sparkling swimming pools.

According to Israeli figures, the average Israeli uses about four times more water a year than the average Palestinian. Arab experts say that Israel looks to Palestinian resources to assuage the Jewish state's own water shortage. Israel controls all water sources in its borders and in the West Bank, captured from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war. West Bank water aquifers provide 680 million cubic meters (24 billion cubic feet) and are enough to cover Palestinian demand, but Israel diverts 80 percent for its own use, Palestinian experts say.

The 5,000 Jewish settlers in the Hebron region receive 17,000 cubic meters (600,300 cubic feet) of water a day, while the Palestinian population of 400,000 receives a total of only 7,000 cubic meters (247,200 cubic feet), said Hebron water official Kamal Dweik.

More than a billion people lack safe, clean water and the problem will worsen next century, experts say.

Most of the projected water shortages in 2025 would be in Africa and the Middle East, but India, parts of China, Peru, England and Poland would also be affected, said a newly formed commission that focuses on world water supplies.

The commission said the problem could afflict more than 40 countries in all. A United Nations analysis found that 1.4 billion people now lacked safe and reliable water. Water-related diseases killed from five million to seven million people annually, experts said. The UN said up to half of the population of the developing world suffered from such diseases at any given time.

The UN said shortages would affect 2.3 billion people, or 30 percent of the world's population, in more than 40 nations by 2025.

Pollution affects water supplies even when there's not a shortage. The fouling of the waterways and surrounding river basins contributed to the total of 25 million environmental refugees last year, for the first time exceeding the world's 21 million war-related refugees, said the World Commission on Water for the 21st Century.

Much of the problem resulted from the world's patterns of settlement, experts said. Two-thirds of the world's people live in regions receiving one quarter of the world's rainfall.

Regional conflicts over water could turn violent as shortages grow. In Africa, Central Asia, the Near East, and South America, some countries are already bickering over access to rivers and inland seas.

Ismail Serageldin, chairman of the World Commission on Water, said "Water is life. Shortage of fresh water is … going to be one of the major problems of the 21st century."

The globe's population, which stood at 1.6 billion in 1900, has increased by nearly 4.5 billion in the past 100 years, according to a report from the Washington-based Population Reference Bureau.

World population by the billions
People	When reached?	How long did it take?
1 billion	About 1800	All of human history
2 billion	1930	130 years
3 billion	1960	30 years
4 billion	1974	14 years
5 billion	1987	13 years
6 billion	1999	12 years

Among our more than 6 billion people at the close of the 20th century there are really two demographic worlds. One is poor, young and growing. In countries like Uganda and Niger, the median age is 15 and the growth rate is fast enough to double the population in 23 years.

The other demographic world is wealthy, old and shrinking. The median age in Italy and Japan is 40. And the population growth in those countries has fallen to zero or below.

"Europe is a demographic catastrophe," says Economist Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute. "If you take that trend out 500 years you're going to have eight Italians and three Irish on the face of the Earth." The UN forecasts that Europe will lose half its population by 2100.

By the end of the next millennium, Tokyo would be a ghost town, and Japan would be empty. At the current rate, the country's population would be just 500 by the year 3000, and just one by 3500.

Closer to the present, the United Nations projects that in 2050 a quarter of the developed world will be older than 65. That is a higher proportion of retirement-age people than Florida has today.

The implications of the birth dearth are potentially as far-reaching as those of the population bomb.

"Although it sounds silly to state a point so obvious," social scientist Francis Fukuyama writes, "social capital cannot exist without people, and Western societies are failing to produce enough of them to sustain themselves."

What these lower fertility rates mean is that fewer people will spend major portions of their lives living in families. Already, half of all Scandinavians live alone, as do one third of the Swiss and one quarter of Americans. "In a couple of generations," Fukuyama points out, "most Europeans and Japanese may be related only to their ancestors." In other words, the family as the basic unit of society will virtually cease to exist in these nations.

The decline of rich nations is also likely to change the balance of global political power. In 1900, Europe had three times the population of Africa; by 2050, Africa will have three times the population of Europe. In 1950, six of the 12 most populous countries were in the developed world; by 2050, the US will be the only developed country in the top 12.

How did we get to this point? Perhaps the largest share of the blame should be placed on a shift in cultural attitudes. We've gone from being a society that viewed children as a blessing from God and family obligations as a sacred trust, to one which emphasizes prosperity and self-indulgence. To all too many people, the responsibilities of families--especially large families--are just a drag.

In the long run, we may yet rediscover the basic truth well known to our ancestors--that children really are a blessing from God, bringing not only material benefits but emotional and spiritual ones. It'd be nice to see the day again when that's just one of those things everybody knows.

Modern irrigation has helped make the arid reaches of northern Syria bloom. The fields of parsley -- a major crop in the region -- are green and lush despite a dry year. But the supply of water that made this bounty possible is rapidly running out.

Syrian officials complain that Turkish plans to dam the Euphrates River is causing water levels to fall at Lake Assad, the reservior that provides much of Syria's strategic water supply. The lake and dam -- built with Soviet assistance and named for Syrian leader Hafez Assad -- is also reeling from increasing demand from people, livestock and agriculture.

Syrian officials complain that Turkey has ignored its protests. Residents have abandoned areas where wells have run dry, and unless farmers change their ways, observers say more people could be displaced: That could cause more problems in an already-turbulent region.

About 790 million people in the world suffer from chronic malnutrition, said a report issued Thursday in London by the U.N. World Food Program. Those numbers were attributed to war and natural disasters. The report said that the number of malnourished people had declined by roughly 8 million a year during the period between 1990-1992 and 1995-1997.

It based its findings on a minimum requirement for caloric intake, which varied according to the country under study. But it also said that the decline in the number of malnourished of roughly 40 million people over the past five years was ‘by far not enough to ensure that the (1996) World Food Summit target is met.’

At that summit, 186 countries committed themselves to halving the number of malnourished people in the world by 2015, noted Hartwig de Haen, who directed the study by United Nations statisticians. In order to reach that target, food was needed for 20 million more people each year, or 2.5 times the actual increase, the report said. The WFP noted that while malnutrition had declined by about 100 million people in 37 countries, it increased by 60 million in others, which it called a ‘worrying divergence.’

As scientists note the arrival of the six billionth human being on the planet, they also are warning that 16 percent of the world's population is consuming some 80 percent of its natural resources. That's the estimated toll the wealthiest populations on the globe -- the United States, Europe and Japan -- are taking from the earth's natural bounty to sustain their way of life. In the U.S. alone, says Emily Matthews of the World Resources Institute, every man, woman and child is responsible for the consumption of about 25 tons of raw materials each year.

Americans, while making up only four percent of the world's population, operate one third of its automobiles. U.S. citizens consume one quarter of the world's global energy supply. Perhaps a more graphic example is that of the lowly quarter-pound hamburger. To produce just one requires 1.2 pounds of grain to feed the cattle, and 100 gallons of water -- part of the hidden cost consumers never see.