The world water day has been declared in 1992, over 30 years ago, to draw attention to economic and social effects of clean waters availability to populations and its impacts on health, well-being, equality and economy. Nevertheless a third of the global population remains to live without proper drinking water and half of the population without proper sanitation services. Thus we too, chose to write about this topic to remind of this important topic. Luckily remarkable improvement has been made since the beginning of the millennium, 1,8 billion people have reached access to clean drinking water and an increase of 2,1 billion people have reached toilet facilities. For universal clean water coverage in 2030 this progress needs to quadruple.
97,5% of Earths water is salty and the rest is fresh water, most of this fresh water is frozen, an estimate of 1% of the worlds water resources are accessible for humans to use. Climate change affects the water resources, by intensifying droughts and rains. In 2016 an estimate of 4 billion people annually suffer from a seasonal water deficit that lasts a minimum of 1 month. Undeniably man made pollution is the largest threat to water resources, an estimate of 80% of global industrial and municipal wastewater is lead back into the environment without any cleaning or waste water management. This is a disaster considering the basic need for clean drinking water to maintain health. Clean and available water enables the practice of hygiene which is a central issue in preventing diarrhea, respiratory infections and many tropical diseases. Diarrhea is very preventable by washing hands and access to non contaminated drinking water, over 800 000 deaths could be prevented yearly by these means. The risks are remarkably higher when clean water is lacking in health care facilities.
In addition to massive effects on health, fetching water consumes time and is often left for the females to do. This limits girls ability to participate in education and draws resources away from labor, causing inequality and restricting overall economic potential contributing to poverty in water-stressed countries.
The UN has estimated that a necessity for humane living is to have 50-100 liters of clean water available daily for drinking, cooking and washing needs. In Finland we use an average of 155 liters of water daily per capita. How can I save water? Shop sustainably! Producing a pair of jeans uses 10,000 liters of water. Consider your diet! Production of food always requires water, however it is possible to consider how much water is consumed in this process. Switching meat to plant based meals, according to some studies a meat eaters diet consumes up to 14 times more water than a vegetarians diet. Additionally, for example it takes approximately 3000 to 5000 liters of water to produce one kilogram of rice and 500 liters to produce one kilogram of potatoes. Discuss! The world water day also provides an excellent chance to discuss waters importance to health, education and global economy.
Sources: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/drinking-water , https://www.peta.org.uk/blog/10-shocking-stats-about-water-and-meat-eating/ , https://www.ykliitto.fi/tapahtumat/yk-paivat/maailman-vesipaiva , https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/the-lazy-persons-guide-to-saving-water/ , https://www.sanitationandwaterforall.org/about/about-us/water-sanitation-hygiene/why-sdg-6-matters