by Patricia Young

Created on: March 12, 2010

In this, the third millenneum, ever increasing natural disasters seem to be occurring right around the world. Random acts of terror by Mother Nature such as tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, droughts and hurricanes ravage both affluent and poor countries without distinction. As a result, many thousands lose their lives from disease caused by unsafe water and sanitation.

But in developing countries around the world, billions of people are living their everyday lives without something that we in the ‘lucky countries’ all take for granted – access to safe water and sanitation. Nearly one billion people live without access to safe water, and 2.5 billion do not have proper sanitation.

Each year, 1.6 million children under five (90% of all related deaths) die from diarrhea which is mainly caused from poor sanitation and polluted water supply.

It seems incredible that in this enlightened age of technology, one in eight people in the world do not have access to clean water and one in four people live without access to improved sanitation.

The same water cycle has been working since time was. All living things depend on this cycle, because without it we would cease to exist. The water cycle has no beginning and no end. It just keeps going around. 99% of the world’s water is saline or enclosed in the polar icecaps.

The water in your juicy apple may have fallen as rain on the other side of the world six months ago, or it could have been used millions of years ago by the dinosaurs. We cannot add to the finite amount of water on our planet, but we can all do something positive about water quality.

What should we do?

World Water Day celebrated annually on March 22 was established by the United Nations in 1992 to create awareness on the world water crisis and what we as concerned citizens can do about it.

The Millennium Development Goals for safe water and sanitation have a target to halve the number of people without access to these vital resources by the year 2015.

The greatest challenge in supplying these improved services is lack of finance and around $15 billion is the shortfall needed to reach this target. Donations are gratefully accepted.

The World Bank is committed to doing all it can to help meet the challenges, and it is funded by both the public and private sector to help deliver safe water supply and sanitation to needy countries.

Water.org is a non-profit organization that has transformed the lives in thousands of communities in the third

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>