Today marks the day we acknowledge a crucial part of our existence, our lifestyle, our health, and our future well-being.
It is World Water Day which is dedicated to the preservation of freshwater resources by raising awareness and promoting water education.
It was started by the UN in 1993, and governments and organizations acknowledge March 22 as the day to work on preserving the natural cycles of water.
We rely on water for every facet of our lives, but we often have little control over it.
![Waterfall in Karura Forest [Manyara Kinoti]](https://allianceforscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/LWM_8837-scaled.jpg)
This is the reason why cooperation is necessary. Water pays no heed to borders or boundaries. Through land, sea, and sky, the water cycle envelops all of us, and when we don’t preserve it, we suffer.
Two billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water and nearly half the world’s population lacks safe sanitation.
Households, agriculture, industry, and energy are the primary consumers of water in our society and, coincidentally, the most crucial sectors for improving our well-being.
This is despite global commitments in 2015 to provide safe water and sanitation by 2030, as part of UN Sustainable Development Goal 6.
According to the UN, “We are seriously off-track.”
Households, agriculture, industry, and energy are the primary consumers of water in our society and, coincidentally, the most crucial sectors for improving our well-being.
Water demands in all these sectors are projected to go up, and yet we struggle to fulfill our demands today.
Water is necessary for our survival, and we disregard it at our peril.
Coming together as one
In the early 2000s, UNESCO established the World Water Assessment Program to produce periodic, system-wide global overviews of the status of freshwater resources: the World Water Development Report.
Beginning in 2014, these reviews addressed specific themes that apply to the maintenance of our water resources.
These range from Water and Energy to Wastewater to Leaving No One Behind.
Together, they form a comprehensive knowledge base that addresses every facet of water in our society, drawing from dozens of case studies around the world.
Armed with this knowledge, the time came for an organized global push to implement strategies that can get us to our sustainability goals.
Bringing it all together
This brings us back to today: March 22, 2023. The theme for this year’s World Water Day is Accelerating Change to Solve the Water and Sanitation Crisis.
Today, the world aims to commit to solving the problem. To accelerate the change we need so our children will not struggle.
There are many ways we can save water in our daily lives, and even if it is just a drop, it’s a drop in the right direction.
This is exemplified in the UN 2023 Water Conference that begins today. This is the first UN conference on water in nearly half a century and it attempts to collect action pledges from stakeholders to compile into the Water Action Agenda.
After collecting commitments from all interested parties, a stakeholder consultation will be held to organize the inputs based on five key themes: Water for Health, focused on access to safe drinking water, hygiene, and sanitation; Water for Development, focused on the value of water in sustainable socioeconomic development; Water for Climate, focused on improving ecological resilience, biodiversity, and disaster risk reduction with a holistic viewpoint, ‘From Source to Sea’; Water for Cooperation, focused on international water cooperation and Water Action Decade, focused on making sure that our decade objectives are completed on time.
Water actions
The UN has created a guide list of simple #WaterActions suitable for everyone.
These actions range from spreading awareness to informing yourself about water systems to taking shorter showers.
In the spirit of commitment and solidarity, the UN has also created platforms to share actions addressing the water crisis and learn what other people are doing.
The mascot for today’s World Water Day is the hummingbird, inspired by a Peruvian folk tale of the tiny hummingbird doing what it can to shuttle water to a forest fire, one drop at a time.
We could all use that hummingbird’s spirit, and achieve great things.
There are many ways we can save water in our daily lives, and even if it is just a drop, it’s a drop in the right direction.