Water is life. So, if water is life, then easy access to fresh water is a basic right that each and every person in this world must enjoy. The reality, however, is far from it.
United Nations data revealed that 2.2 billion people in the world have no access to safe water. It is an alarming number considering that we are now living in a world that is more technologically advanced than before. If a basic right to clean water could not be guaranteed by governments, how are other rights safeguarded?
Sounding this alarm is the UN as it marked last March 22, 2022 as World Water Day. An annual event held since 1993, this year focused on the importance of freshwater, specifically groundwater — an invisible resource with an impact visible everywhere.
“World Water Day is about taking action to tackle the global water crisis. A core focus is to support the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 6: Water and sanitation for all by 2030,” said the UN in a statement. It added that the focus is groundwater — “water found underground in aquifers, which are geological formations of rocks, sands, and gravels that hold substantial quantities of water. Groundwater feeds springs, rivers, lakes, and wetlands, and seeps into oceans. Groundwater is recharged mainly from rain and snowfall infiltrating the ground. Groundwater can be extracted to the surface by pumps and wells.”
Cities and communities around the world, including a majority of countryside areas of our country, rely on groundwater as it supplies a large proportion of the water used for drinking, sanitation, food production, and industrial processes. Add to that, groundwater is also critically important to the healthy functioning of ecosystems, such as wetlands and rivers.
The UN called on all nations to protect water sources from overexploitation, which it defined as “abstracting more water than is recharged by rain and snow — and allowing pollution to deplete this resource, thus putting extra costs to process water, or to entirely prevent its use.”
World Water Day was conceived way back in 1992, the year in which the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro took place. That same year, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution mandating March 22 of each year as World Water Day. In the Philippines, the celebration started in 1996 when then President Fidel V. Ramos issued Administrative Order No. 258 instructing all pertinent government agencies to join the global observance.
This year, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) marked the occasion with the gathering of policymakers and experts for the 1st National River Basin Summit, with a theme aligned with the UN. The summit documented best practices and lessons learned from various river basin initiatives crucial to the country’s need for sustainable integrated river management practices for implementation within the 421 principal river basins.
The UN also used the occasion to call on everyone — you and me included as we use water — to help raise awareness on the importance of protecting and sustainably using groundwater and all our sources of water. It could start by simply preventing water wastage at all cost and letting go of activities that utilize this precious resource irresponsibly.
As long as we are thirsty and there is a glass of clean, pure water available in front of us, some of us may never even care about this issue. But what happens when the river runs dry? Or when climate change destroys the flow of fresh water? Or when you turn on the shower and no water drops on your head? Or when suddenly, a glass of water is worth a pound of gold?