1.8 billion people live without water by 2025

By Maybin Katungulu

We have heard this phrase "Water is Life"several occasions but I do not think that we have time a moment of reflection over it as individuals ,governments, traditional leaders and all other stake-holders.

Certainly, it sounds like any other slogan and without  serious meaning in our lives yet it reminds us that no human being including other creatures can survive without this wonderful natural resource, water.

In my country Zambia, we have witnessed water body depletion as a result of  human activities such as indiscriminate cutting of trees, unsustainable method of agriculture and failure to follow existing laws on exploitation of natural resources  yet we watch as if nothing was wrong.

I have no doubt many of us perhaps have had realised the importance of water when the country began to experience power deficit which had been attributed to the low water levels in the Kariba Dam.

 As Zambia joins the rest of the world in commemorating 2017 water day I find it necessary to reflect on the statement below as issued by UNCCD:

 By 2025, 1.8 billion people will experience absolute water scarcity, and 2/3 of the world will be living under water-stressed conditions.  In the meanwhile, we continuously waste precious natural resources like land and water.
A number of statistics indicate that we are wasting our natural capital at an accelerating pace. Poorly-managed natural capital is not only an ecological liability but also a social and economic threat.

The over exploitation of natural capital can be disastrous, and not just in terms of land degradation and water scarcity. The loss of ecosystem productivity and resilience makes many regions more prone to extreme weather events such as floods, landslides and droughts.

Drought and water scarcity are considered to be the most far-reaching of all natural disasters, causing short and long-term economic and ecological losses as well as significant secondary and tertiary impacts. In the coming decades, drought is projected to increase in frequency, severity, duration and spatial extent. More and more people will suffer, and even fight, because of water scarcity.

This year, the World Water Day sends a message to everyone for taking action on reducing and reusing wastewater under the theme, “Why waste water?”
Think about this. Collectively, women from Sub-Saharan Africa spend about 40 billion hours a year collecting water. How much water do you waste a day? Why waste water?