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Why is valuing water key to human existence?


Published : 01 Apr 2021 06:51 PM | Updated : 07 Apr 2021 04:54 PM

Water is a vital human demand. Everybody needs a minimum of 20 to 50 liters of unpolluted, safe water daily for drinking, food preparation and keeping themselves clean. However, inadequacy of safe drinking waters is increasing day by day around the world.

Our water resources are limited. Taking to demand action exploitation our water safely and caring for it properly, globally World Water Day was celebrated on 22 March. Theme for this year was “Valuing Water”.

The day celebrated water and raises awareness of the worldwide water crisis, and use water resources in an exceedingly accountable manner.

The SDG goal 6 pledges to confirm convenience and justifiable management of water and sanitation for all. SDG 6 doesn't solely aim for property water management across the world, it additionally underpins several different SDGs; meeting SDG 6 would go an extended manner towards achieving a lot of the 2030 Agenda.

Water crisis major threat to holistic human development .Contaminated water isn’t simply unclean—it’s toxic. Some 1.8 million people expires every year due to water borne diseases like typhoid, cholera.

10 millions of others are seriously sickened by a number of water-related illnesses, many of that are simply preventable. This barrier is keeping families from lifting themselves out of impoverishment.

Shocking facts about the water crisis round the world

1 in 4 health care facilities lacks basic water services. 3 in 10 folks lack access to securely managed beverage services and 6 in 10 folks lack access to securely managed sanitation facilities.

Girls and women are responsible for water collection in 80 percent of households while not access to water on the premises Water inadequacy affects quite 40 percent of the world population and is projected to rise.

Over 1.7 billion folks are presently living in stream basins wherever water use exceeds recharge. 2.4 billion Folks lack access to basic sanitation services, like latrines.

More than 80 percent of sewer water resulting from human activities is discharged into rivers or ocean without any pollution removal. Each day, nearly 1,000 children die due to preventable water and sanitation-related diseases.

Just about 70 percent of all water abstracted from rivers, lakes and aquifers used for irrigation. Floods account for seventy percent of all deaths associated with natural disasters.

Water crisis in Bangladesh

The World Health Organization assessments that 97 percent of the people of Bangladesh have entree to water and solely 40 percent have acceptable hygiene. Such a shocking 60% of the inhabitants that has to suffer hazardous drinking water, the nation is in danger.

Conserving water, what can we do?

Today, 1 in 3 folks live without safe drinking water. By 2050, up to 5.7 billion folks may be living in areas wherever water is scarce for a minimum of one month a year. Climate-resilient water and sanitation might save the lives of quite 360,000 infants every year.

If we limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, we could cut climate-induced water stress by up to 50%. Extreme weather has caused more than 90% of major disasters over the last decade.

By 2040, global energy demand is projected to increase by over 25% and water demand is expected to increase by more than 50%.

Here are some things we should do to conserve water. When clearing your teeth, shut the tap; use a hosing can to water the plants; use a container to scrub the floors; when lathering in the shower, close the shower tap; select to use a dishwasher to do the dishes; use the accurate water-saving knob on the toilet; we should try to reuse our rainfall; when you drink water from a glass only take as much as you need; consume the water you kept to drink for future; drop tissues within the trash rather than flushing them and save water anytime; use water-friendly equipments; formulate and execute policy to conserve water; improve irrigation and agricultural practices; recycle and reuse waters in aquaculture; and adress water pollution at all levels, especially in the river systems.


What ECOFISH-II is doing?

WorldFish Bangladesh with the support of USAID has been implementing ECOFISH II, a five-year project with the Department of Fisheries & others collaborators to support host-fishing communities within the USAID Zone of Resilience (ZOR) that features Cox's Bazar - Teknaf areas, coastal fishing communities within the Meghna stream system (MRE), and also the NijhumDwip marine protected areas (MPA) to improve the resilience of the ecosystem of these coastal areas.

It has taken comprehensive actions to safeguard biodiversity, and enhance ecosystem resilience in the areas. The project have been implementing various measures towards water conservation, ecosystem health improvement and pollution control, and livelihood supports for marginalized coastal fishers.

Over the last 6 years, USAID/ECOFISH activity of WorldFish Bangladesh has tried to conserve water through awareness raising initiatives including optimum use of water in vegetable gardening, use of safe drinking waters, use of sanitary latrines, awareness building about the pollution level in the rivers and necessity of its control, fishers training towards responsible fishing and not polluting the rivers and oceans with plastic containers and nylon netting materials.

This activity has a plan to introduce ‘blue guards’ as environmental volunteers to improve the quality of the open waters by controlling the major polluting materials.

  • The writer is working at the WorldFish Bangladesh as Communications Specialist. He can be reached at [email protected]