One of nature's more sobering statistics is that only 0.008 percent of the earth's water is fit for human consumption. The preciousness of this most precious of resources is becoming more acute as the global environment changes. Some areas suffer from ongoing drought while others, like Bangladesh, are perennially plagued by flooding.
On TV Tokyo's "Ningen to Chikyu 45-oku Nen no Nazo (The Mystery of 4.5 Billion Years of Humans and the Earth) on Monday at 9 p.m., actor Masahiro Komoto attempts to get a grasp of both extremes. First, he travels to the Republic of Chad in Africa. On maps of the country, Lake Chad is a prominent feature, but Komoto discovers that Lake Chad barely exists. It has been drying up at an alarming rate. Once, fishing villages on the lake thrived, but now there are no jobs, and the young people in these villages have been forced to go to the cities to look for work.
Komoto then travels to an area of Niigata prefecture that was practically swept away by torrential rainstorms last year. Comparing the two situations, he realizes that humans will have to make great adjustments in the future just to survive.