We start and end our days wasting vast amounts of water, washing our face, teeth, and bodies. With one shower of about 10 minutes a day, an average person consumes the equivalent of over 100,000 glasses of drinking water every year.
According to the United Nations World Water Development Report 2019, severe water scarcity affects about 4 billion people, or nearly two-thirds of the world population, at least one month each year. Conserving water has never felt so urgent.
“Freshwater is a precious resource in many parts of the world, one that is increasingly under threat due to overconsumption, climate change, and pollution. At the same time, access to water is essential to just about everything that each of us does on a daily basis: producing food and energy, maintaining people’s health and well-being, and ensuring that ecosystems on land and at sea, and all the biodiversity that lives in them, are functional… Access to water touches most of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and is at the core of UN Environment’s work,” says UN Environment’s freshwater expert Lis Mullin Bernhardt.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that the largest share—69 percent—of the world’s yearly consumption of water goes towards agriculture (which encompasses irrigation, livestock and aquaculture activities), while industry and households absorb the remaining 19 and 12 percent respectively.
No matter where the waste comes from, water scarcity impacts a growing number of people. In many parts of the world, water restrictions are becoming the new normal, as cities struggle to adapt to drier and hotter summers, and saltwater intrusion in low-lying aquifers, due to sea-level rise, threaten freshwater sources.
And while urban populations continue to expand and a growing number of people gain access to clean water for their daily needs, improvements in water efficiency by, for example, improving water distribution systems, combined with smart water delivery and metering technologies, will be essential.
Original source: UN Environment
Published on 29 March 2019
