World Water Day

Every year on March 22, the world celebrates the importance of freshwater through World Water Day.  The UN declared March 22 World Water Day in 1992, following the recommendation of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro earlier that year.

As we all know, water is the ultimate resource.  While many forms of alternative energy and other materials exist, nothing can replace water.  And although the earth is awash in water, only 2% is fresh and only 0.4% is available for human use (the rest is frozen in glaciers and ice sheets).  Humans can exist for a long time without food, but we can live only a few days at most without water.

The availability and use of water varies greatly around the world.  The United States is a great country for many reasons, but chief among them is the abundance of water.  Our water is used not only for consumption, bathing and waste removal in our homes, but also to produce electricity (cooling water), food (irrigation and watering of animals) and the materials we use every day.  Making a t-shirt uses 660 gallons of water, about the same amount as needed to make a typical fast-food restaurant sandwich.  The average American uses about 2000 gallons of water per day when all uses (direct and indirect) are combined.  The average African family, in contrast, uses about 5 gallons per day.  The biggest use of water worldwide is irrigation, absorbing 70% of all freshwater use (in the U.S. that number is only about 30%).  Second comes energy production (about 45% of all water use in the U.S.).

Finding clean water is a daily chore for a large part of the developing world (photo by Orazgeldiyew

Water scarcity impacts around 3 billion people around the world.  And when water isn’t scarce, it often turns out to be a problem by being too abundant, producing floods.  Floods and related impacts account for 70% of all deaths from natural disasters.

Our ability to supply clean water to the world’s poorest people has improved greatly over the past two decades, the result of our focus on the Millennium Development Goals.  About 90% of humans now have improved supply, leaving about 700 million people worldwide still without good water. But sanitation—the removal of human and other wastes from living areas and their treatment—still lags behind other improvements.  About 2.4 billion people lack basic sanitation facilities, causing almost 1000 children to die every day from diseases related to the lack of sanitation .

For those of us in the developed world, the idea of gathering water from a dirty stream is unthinkable, but it is reality for millions in the developing world (photo by Dotun55)

To draw attention to the importance of freshwater, the UN develops a theme for World Water Day every year.  In 2023, the theme is “Accelerating Change” emphasizing that the world needs to speed up its efforts to protect water resources if we are going to meet the goals set out by the UN Sustainable Development Goals. These goals, agreed to by the world’s nations, include Goal 6—Clean Water and Sanitation.  The specific targets for this goal include, by 2030, the following:

  • Achieve universal access to safe and affordable drinking water for all
  • Achieve universal access to basic sanitation for all
  • Cut the amount of untreated wastewater in half
  • Make the use of freshwater sustainable through efficiency improvements
  • Protect and restore water-related ecosystems, including those on national boundaries.

In order to meet these goals, we need to get going!

References:

Save the Water.  250 Water Facts.  Available at:  http://savethewater.org/education-resources/water-facts/.  Accessed March 20, 2018.

UN Water.  2018.  The Answer is in Nature.  Available at:  http://worldwaterday.org/.  Accessed March 20, 2018.

United Nations.  Sustainable Development Goal 6.  Available at:  http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/water-and-sanitation/.  Accessed March 20, 2018.

United Nations.  World Water Day, March 22.  Available at:  http://www.un.org/en/events/waterday/index.shtml.  Accessed March 20, 2018.

This Month in Conservation

February 1
Afobaka Dam and Operation Gwamba (1964)
February 2
Groundhog Day
February 3
Spencer Fullerton Baird, First U.S. Fish Commissioner, Born (1823)
February 3
George Adamson, African Lion Rehabilitator, Born (1906)
February 4
Congress Overrides President Reagan’s Veto of Clean Water Act (1987)
February 5
National Wildlife Federation Created (1936)
February 6
Colin Murdoch, Inventor of the Tranquilizer Gun, Born (1929)
February 7
Karl August Mobius, Ecology Pioneer, Born (1825)
February 8
President Johnson Addresses Congress about Conservation (1965)
February 8
Lisa Perez Jackson, Environmental Leader, Born (1982)
February 9
U.S. Fish Commission Created (1871)
February 10
Frances Moore Lappe, author of Diet for a Small Planet, born (1944)
February 11
International Day of Women and Girls in Science
February 12
Judge Boldt Affirms Native American Fishing Rights (1974)
February 13
Thomas Malthus Born (1766)
February 14
Nature’s Faithful Lovers
February 15
Complete Human Genome Published (2001)
February 16
Kyoto Protocol, Controlling Greenhouse-Gas Emissions, Begins (2005)
February 16
Alvaro Ugalde, Father of Costa Rica’s National Parks, Born (1946)
February 17
Sombath Somphone, Laotian Environmentalist, Born (1952)
February 17
R. A. Fischer, Statistician, Born (1890)
February 18
World Pangolin Day
February 18
Julia Butterfly Hill, Tree-Sitter, Born (1974)
February 19
Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial Established (1962)
February 20
Ansel Adams, Nature Photographer, Born (1902)
February 21
Carolina Parakeet Goes Extinct (1918)
February 22
Nile Day
February 23
Italy’s Largest Inland Oil Spill (2010)
February 24
Joseph Banks, British Botanist, Born (1743)
February 25
First Federal Timber Act Passed (1799)
February 26
Four National Parks Established (1917-1929)
February 27
International Polar Bear Day
February 28
Watson and Crick Discover The Double Helix (1953)
February 29
Nature’s Famous Leapers
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