March 22nd marks World Water Day!
The theme for World Water Day 2018 is "Nature for Water" - exploring nature-based solutions to the water challenges faced in the 21st century.
World Water Day raises awareness and disseminates innovative solutions to reduce floods, droughts, and water pollution.
This years campaign, called "The answer is in nature" calls for nature-based solutions to restore homeostasis to our planet's water system.
Nature-based solutions restoring balance to the water cycle can include anything form planting trees to replenish forests, reconnecting rivers to floodplains, and restoring wetlands. These are examples of sustainable and cost-effective ways to mitigate the effects of climate change and improve human health with cleaner water supply.
There are staggering facts about the state of Water in our world:
- 2.1 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water.
- Agriculture currently accounts for 70% of global water withdrawals, mostly from irrigation - a figure which rises in areas of high water stress and population density.
- Industry takes 20% of the total, dominated by energy and manufacturing.
- The remaining 10% goes to domestic use - the proportion used fro drinking water is much less than 1%.
- All information in this factsheet comes from UNESCO (2018) United Nations World Water Development Report 2018: Nature-based solutions for water
A potentially powerful and easy to implement nature-based solution presented by the World Water Development Report 2018 is to generate more "green infrastructure". Green infrastructure is "natural or semi-natural systems that give equivalent or similar benefits to conventional, human-built 'grey infrastructure'".
An example of green infrastructure are riparian buffers. Riparian buffers are "strips of land along water courses planted with native trees and shrubs". Riparian buffers can drastically reduce pollution from agriculture as the trees and shrubs protect soil from erosion and capture many of the pollutants before reaching the water system.
There are already amazing projects underway all over the world to preserve and restore our water systems: Zimbabwe's sand dams along the Sashane river; Rajasthan, India's small-scale water harvesting structures; conservation agriculture used in smallholder agricultural systems in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa and in large-scale commercial production systems in Brazil and Canada; Sponge cities in China (which allows for the reabsorption of 70% of rain water in urban areas!).
These are amazing example of small and large scale efforts around the world to care for our planet and it's water!
Happy World Water day!