The Importance of Water Sanitation
By Kai M.
“The water crisis is the most pervasive, most severe, and most invisible dimension of the ecological devastation of the earth.” -Vandana Shiva (scholar, environmental activist and anti-globalization author)
Imagine someone told you that your child just died, right now. How would you feel? Shocked? In anguish? Every day, 4000 children die, ending a life that could have brought happiness and peace to others. Why do these children die? Water-borne illnesses. Our world lacks a supply of potable water, water which humans are able to safely consume. This is known as the “global water crisis”. 97.2% of our entire water supply is saltwater, and of the 2.8% of freshwater that is left, 68.7% is locked
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Many areas have even gone beyond contamination with saliva and feces, to dangerous chemical contamination, often resulting in bodies of water such as rivers having dead fish and other organisms floating around in large amounts. Chemical pollution often involves large amounts of metal solvents, agricultural pesticides, simple carbon dioxide (which can also cause grief and large amounts of death in marine organism populations) and petroleum, all because of industrial reasons. Sometimes, humongous amounts of inanimate man made objects also become deadly pollutants, such as plastic bags, sometimes taking up as much as 700,000 square kilometers, the size of Texas. These locations can trap even more marine organisms, causing shifts in balance of the marine ecosystems and food webs, often causing chain reactions which shatter the underwater world. These ecosystems need to be preserved with perseverance for the next generation.
Cleaner water from affordable filtration would lead to less disease, making better use of water collector’s time. Waterborne illnesses are very dangerous. They are the world’s leading cause of death, taking more lives than war and terrorism combined. There are about four million diarrheal diseases every year, resulting one or even two million deaths, 90% of which is children under the age of five, a tragic amount. Smaller amounts of dirty water would easily lead less
Main Point: Third world countries lack accessibility to clean water exposing them to disease and harmful toxins that result in 2.4 million deaths annually (Bartram, 2010).
Many people have suffered from water crisis. Places like California have been dealt with this for some time and has affected so many people lives. Is destroying the most important areas where water is needed. In addition, several people get caught by this situation which eventually leads to death. This is definitely a major issue in today 's world since is destroying the state of California. Most people who come to California for their first time are not even aware that these problems occur and are just putting their one life in risk. Water should to be conserved in order to keep it in the years to come.
Comparing recent reports by WHO et. al(2015) and US Census Bureau(2015) showed that 663 million people-1 in 10 lack access to clean water, that means twice the population of U.S. lives without access to safe water. Globally 1/3 of all schools lack access to safe water(WHO et al. 2015). The water crisis is the number one global risk based on impact to society (as a measure of devastation) as announced by World Economic forum(2015)
According to Unicef, “Two out of every ten children do not make it to their fifth birthday due to a water related illness.” This crisis is preventable and 39% of Western and Central African people should not be living like this. Life is difficult for the people that do not have clean water. ¨Women and children walk up to three hours a day to get water,¨(Unicef). “Women spend more time collecting water than anything else,” stated by Water Changes Everything. “Women and children also carry up to 40 pounds of water every trip they make to get water,” states Water and Sanitation. The information is important because they do not have a good chance to get a job or education and therefore they live in poverty with no chance of having a productive life outside of their village. There are many global problems about this crisis. “The woman and children collecting the water do not get an education because they spend all day getting the water” (Water Changes Everything). “They still do not have proper sanitation water to drink or clean water,” states the The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “On an average year 1.5 million children die a year due to a water related disease,” states Water and Sanitation. This problem is solvable, and we can not allow 1.5 million children to die a year and not get an education. Research must continue in order to solve this
Water crisis refers to the situation where the available water within a geographical location cannot meet the water needs of the population in that location. This prevalent situation has drawn considerable attention in most countries due to its severity to humanity. Because of the tripling of the population in the 21st century, the demand for water has remained considerably higher than the available clean and safe water. Despite the fact that the earth is covered by seventy percent of water, only four percent of this water is fresh. The rest is saline. Additionally, out of the fresh water, sixty-nine percent consists of glaciers, while the rest is available as surface or underground water. As a result,
Water is an essential resource to sustain life. From 50 - 90 percent of the weight of living organisms is water. Water is the major constituent of living matter. Water, essential for growth of all crops, is the natural resource in shortest supply. More than 20 countries lack sufficient water to grow enough food for their people. The situation is getting worse as needs for water rise along with population growth, urbanization and increases in household and industrial uses. According to a UN report two-thirds of mankind will suffer moderate to severe water crisis within next 30 years if remedial steps are not taken. World Bank report estimates 5 million deaths from unsafe drinking water and investments to the tune of $ 600 billion worldwide
Water supply and sanitation is a problem in developing nations as they lack the proper resources to install a water collection foundation. Bolivia can be considered a developing nation that has a water supply problem as they do not necessarily have the proper infrastructure to supply their population and they also lack a water regulation program. The village of Lupalaya is a small settlement located at approximately -16.195 degrees latitude, -68.841 degrees longitude with an estimated elevation of 12,600 ft above sea level on the shore of Lake Titicaca. The village is also located 60 miles NW of the largest populous city in Bolivia of La Paz. Due to Lupalaya’s proximity to La Paz the village is greatly affected by the La Paz-El Alto concession which led to the privatization of water supply and sanitation.
Water is not just a cool drink to have on a hot summer day, water is a non-renewable resource that enables life and fuels all human activities. “[However because of population growth and economic development, water resources in many parts of the world are pushed to their natural limits.” (Growing Blue®, 2016). If water is not prioritized and nothing is done by all nations now, the future will be left with no water.
Many of these issues are being thought through by governments and NGOs around the world. Although it seems like Earth’s water is disappearing, we just have not been taking care of this life-giving renewable resource.
The lack of safe water supplies and abundance of preventable diseases that result have together become one of the modern world 's top 10 global killers (WHO, 2015). Water-related illnesses claim the lives of more than 2,000 people per day (Water.org, 2015; Prüss-Ustün, A., et al., 2014). A recent United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report states that 10% of the global disease burden could be reduced by improving water supplies, sanitation and hygiene practices, and water resource management in these areas (World Water Assessment Programme, 2009, p.88).
Water treatment is used worldwide in order to create potable (i.e. drinkable) water from the raw water brought into a treatment plant. Common sources for the raw water include nearby bodies of water and even wastewater from homes or businesses which need to be treated to be reused. Increases in the portability and efficiency of the processes involved could hopefully be readily implemented in more impoverished areas of the world where potable water is a much more scarce resource.
Water is everyone in the world and this is the major reason why many individuals never think about the limited supply of water. People presume that the water supply is infinite. The common saying “you do not know what you have until it is gone” rings true. Never having to worry about possessing fresh drinking water on a daily basis has caused many individuals to never question where the water is coming from or how much water is left. Due to the simple fact that water covers a majority of the earth, the realization that only a small percentage of this water supply is drinkable is rarely realized. The distinction between freshwater and salt water is imperative to understand. Humans cannot drink salt water due to its high levels of salinity. Freshwater is our only source of drinkable water and unfortunately it is only a small percentage. With such a small portion of the water supply being usable a dilemma presents itself; what happens when this small percentage of useable water is exhausted. Unfortunately this water scarcity problem is difficult to combat and therefore many individuals have pushed the problem aside for others to deal with later. Although scholars have noted that water scarcity is a global issue and that efforts towards the conservation of water are desperately needed, individual countries, specifically the United States, have ignored the problem and if the US hopes to solve the issue before it becomes a catastrophe they must recognize the need for laws and
An essential part of life on this planet is water. Water is in practically every living organism and it is absolutely necessary that water is readily available when it is needed. Over seventy percent of the planet is covered in water, of which only about three percent is fresh water that humans can consume which a lot of is trapped in glaciers and icecaps (FAO). In many parts of the world, there are places where fresh drinking water is not available for people because it is contaminated or hard to reach or some other kind of obstructive factor. In the current media, places of this nature include Flint, Michigan where the water source is contaminated, the state of California where there is a drought, and several places in Africa where there
The water crisis has been known in the world for many years now, but as time goes on people have not realized the greater effect this has had on the world. Most people who know about the crisis do not know the regions it affects and frankly seem to not care unless it affects them directly. The shortages of water have led to health concerns and money problems in many countries. Both of these factors correlate because if health problems go up so does the economic issue. India has been one of the regions hit badly with the recent depletion of water. It has many small cities that people have never heard about, that suffer much greater than this country as a whole. The overpopulation in India is not helping solve the scarcity of water and with
The need for water is under estimated in the world and the diagram below depicts our water scarcity and the need for water in countries all over the world.