World Water Day

Since 1992 when the United Nations designated 22nd March as the annual Word Water Day, has there been any improvement in the global water crisis?

Well, for a start we haven't actually found anymore drinking water on this planet (and No all that stuff on the Moon does not count!). As I wrote in an earlier post (Figuring the Facts about Water, 31st March 2009), around 97% of the Earth's water is salty or otherwise undrinkable, and another 2% is stored in the ice caps and glaciers, we're left with only 1% for us to use. So it's hardly surprising that not all of us has access to safe drinking water. The latest WHO/UNICEF's Joint Monitoring Program report, published this month, reveals the limitations of the progress we have made globally:

• 883 million people do not use an improved source of drinking-water
  
• 2.6 billion people (yes, that's 2,600,000,000!) still do not have access to adequate sanitation services
  
• and a staggering 1.1 billion also must still practice open defacation

So we really could not pat ourselves on the back on Word Water Day.

When will we achieve basic human rights to clean safe water and adequate sanitation wordwide? The Millenium Development Goal (MDG) target relating to drinking-water and sanitation (MDG 7, Target 7c), is to: "Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking-water and basic sanitation". Well apparently, we're not going to manage this, so having an annual reminder day about this global issue is helpful in raising public awareness only if it gets blanket coverage across all media, not just the internet! It might also help if writers like me get there on time - rather than a day late!! Oh well, maybe next year... If all this leaves you feeling guilty about that bottle of E**** or whatever brand sitting on your table, then GOOD - it should! We have safe cheap tap water here in the UK and yet we are happily spending about 1000x more litre-for-litre on a bottle of water rather than open the tap. If you do one thing this year, give the bottle the boot to get real about our most precious commodity. One day, not too far in the future, we'll be going to war over the right to have enough drinking water coming out of our taps. Let's not hasten this with our dependence on bottled water.