14 reasons to celebrate World Water Day
Mar 21, 2018
World Water Day is a day to celebrate the blessing endowed on Earth by every drop of water
WATER
By Simon J. Mone
World Water day is celebrated on March 22 every year. It is a day to celebrate the blessing endowed on Earth by every drop of water. That water is an essential element to life cannot be less emphasised. A look at the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offers more evidence to this fact.
Of the 17 SDGs, fourteen are related to water, hence 14 reasons to celebrate World Water Day.
Climate action
To start with, people living in the drier areas of the world because of climate action, on many occasions spend a lot of their precious time looking for water. The young girls wake up early to make their way through the morning dew for long distances in order to collect water. Then on return, they prepare to go to school. However, they reach school late. They end up not performing well at the end of the term.
Quality of education
Looking for water means they miss some lessons. If school-going children had easy access to plenty of clean and safe water, they would be able to stay in school. This is not to be, as their continued no show for full lessons because they spend time out, makes them miss a lot of school, hence poor results. This can easily translate to poor quality of education.
Poverty
The older people also, instead of concentrating all their valuable time on income generating activities, worry so much as they divide attention their between looking for water and livelihood. And so goes the saying, "a hyena at crossroads often times gets confused as to which direction to take." So they spend some time looking for water. A lot of time needed to do other chores is lost. On the other hand, too much water in terms of floods destroys livelihoods, hence poverty.
Floods
We have seen examples where the floods have killed people. So either way, too much or too little water keeps a majority of people in poverty.
Hunger
Little water makes the world drier. It deprives us, and makes us stare at hunger.
Diseases
This is because it becomes harder to cultivate the fields and harvest food to feed families. The lack of water discourages good health and well-being of people as they are forced to fetch unsafe waters, which often cause waterborne diseases.
Safe water
These diseases are expensive to treat, taking away all the money that people would have otherwise spent on other priority areas. But abundant, clean and safe water promotes good health and well being.
Gender
That is why it is important to have ample clean and safe water available to support life and everything else around life. More often than not, the gender that goes out to look for water is the female, while males either attend to other chores, or are at home relaxing.
Inequality
The female even come up against conflicts at water points as they struggle and compete for water. Yet, if water would not be scarce, the female would be at home doing other domestic activities as well and reduce inequalities.
Development
Water is the common factor in delivering a successful development agenda for communities.
Industries
Plenty of water is good. It powers industries and also promotes clean energy. Industries get many people of the world involved, thereby creating more jobs.
Sustainability
Sustainable cities and communities are those where residents find healthy and easy to live in. When there are no flood waters. Sustainable cities have adequate drainage of storm water to safer places that do not affect residents' livelihoods. Flooding causes a lot of social and environmental costs that reduces the economic graph of communities, leading to poverty.
Drainage
Proper drainage makes life on land safe.
Safety
It makes life below water safe. Discharge of untreated industrial effluent to water sources kills the habitat below it.
These are 14 reasons to celebrate World Water Day. Every drop of water is vital. So, we ought to be efficient with water.
The writer is a civil engineer