The Soviet Union possessed both scarce and abundant water resources. With about 3 million rivers and approximately 4 million inland bodies of water, the Soviet Union held the largest fresh, surface-water resources of any country. But most of these resources (84 percent), as with so much of the Soviet resource-base, lay at a great distance from the majority of potential users; they flowed through sparsely populated territory and into the Arctic and Pacific oceans. In contrast, areas with the highest concentrations of the population (and therefore the highest demand for water supplies) tended to have the warmest climates and highest rates of evaporation. This resulted in barely adequate (or in some cases inadequate) water-resources in the areas of most need.