Water is the most important resource we got on our planet, and we would literally die very fast we we did not have access to it. Despite the fact that water is of such important, many people don't have good access to it, and today is the annual day where the UN is trying to raise awareness of the issue with the World Water Day.
The World Water day is officially marked on March 22nd each year, and the aim of the project is to highlight the importance of freshwater, as well as advocating the sustainable management of freshwater sources. The first time the event was held was back in 1993, and has since been marked all around the world on this day.
During this day the UN and other organizations attempt to spread awareness of the issues related to freshwater, and even try to inspire people to take local actions to make the world a better place.
This year's theme for the World Water Day is Nature for Water, where the focus is on nature-based solutions for solving the water challenges we are facing in the 21st century. Currently 2.1 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water services, and 1.8 billion of these people are believed to have a drinking water supply that is not even protected against contamination from human feces!
Almost 2 billion people live in areas with a potentially severely water-scarcity, and projections show us that as many as 3 billion people could live in such areas by 2050.
We humans are also experts at destroying good freshwater ecosystems, and at least 64 % of all natural wetlands have already been destroyed by human activities. Soil erosion from croplands also alters a lot of ecosystems, and poses a huge threat to local water supplies. Over 65 % of forested land is currently in a degraded state, which again reduces its possibility to store water.
This year's theme wants us to be thinking about how nature can help us solve the issues, instead of relying on engineering and other non-natural methods. The best way to achieve this in my opinion is to stop destroying forest, wetlands, natural freshwater sources, and trying to regrow some of the ones we have already destroyed.
Restoring wetlands is very good for the local species in the area, but it does so much more than this. A wetland provides us with extremely important ecosystem services, such as flood- and hurricane prevention. When a hurricane hits shore, a wetland will create friction for the hurricane, and reduce the high winds. Some hurricanes such as Hurricane Katrina could potentially do a lot less damage if more wetlands had been conserved prior to the hurricane.
A wetland will also help purify the local water, and can recharge the groundwater resources in the area.
There are of course other nature-based solutions besides just protecting and restoring wetlands, but I would rather that we have a good discussion about it in the comments than just me listing them all here. So, what nature-based solutions do you think could help solve the current issues with freshwater?
All the numbers used in this post is from the World Water Day fact sheet, which you can check out by following the link. If you want to learn more about the World Water Day, then head over to their website, or see the Wikipedia article.
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