As it is very well said,”World War III will be fought over water”, water conservation has become the core area to be focused on for combating the approaching Water Catastrophe.
NASA in 2015 had revealed through its data that out of the total 37 large aquifers on earth, 21 are water stressed. Also increase in the population affects the demand of water.
Population Growth ∝ Agricultural & Industrial water demand
According to this article “World War III will be fought over water” in 2015, an Indian named Rajendra Singh was awarded Stockholm Water Prize for his contribution in transforming 1000 villages of India from water deficit to water surplus region. Modernised ancient Indian technique was used by him for harvesting rain water and thus he is known as “Water Man of India”. He was also awarded with Ramon Magsaysay award in 2001.
The data from survey carried out by WHO-lives NGO in 2019, depicts that more than 1 billion people are still not having access to clean water. At the end of each day, a question arise in our mind that,”What steps should be taken for making clean water available to all?”
The factual data from this NGO mentions the below facts:
- Death count of people affected by scarce and contaminated water sources, is 3.4 million each year.
- The average walk of the women and the children going for collecting water from distant and polluted sources, is 3.7 miles which consumes their time and deprives them from working at income-generating job resulting in making them weaker economically.
- At a particular given time period, if a survey is carried out than the data collected will depict that over half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from diseases associated with polluted drinking water.
- Outside the U.S., approximately over 1 billion people do not have access to clean and safe drinking water.
Also, by having a look at World Water Council’s report “World Water Vision Report” it is mentioned there that, “There is a water crisis today. But the crisis is not about having too little water to satisfy our needs. It is a crisis of managing water so badly that billions of people-and the environment-suffer badly.” Awareness is increasing with the fact that our fresh water resources are limited and their quality and quantity is to be maintained by us.
Now is the time to conserve these water resources and if they are not conserved now, it will result into great water catastrophe in the near future.
Last but not the least, the key message of 2nd World Water Forum, “Water is everybody’s business” is an alarming message for the whole world to save the water sinks and resources inorder to save ourselves from the approaching water catastrophe.
भूतेश्वर: एक लेखक 