Water: conserving and keeping it clean

By
Damian Daga
When the late Nigerian Afro Juju legend, Fela Kuti sang “water e no get enemy...” he probably meant water is appreciated and needed by all and sundry. Water constitutes 70.9 percent of the earth’s surface. Water which is essential for all known forms of life is broken down on earth into 96.5 percent as oceans, 1.7 percent as groundwater, 1.7 percent as glaciers and ice caps, 0.001 percent in air as vapour, precipitation and clouds while only 2.5 percent is fresh-water.

According to Wikipedia, water is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state. Water’s scientific name is known as “dihydrogen monoxide.”

Regrettably, even with perceived improved access to safe drinking water, statistics indicate that approximately one billion people, none the less lack access to safe drinking water. With the over 7 billion people on the planet, statistics say that each drinks from 2 to 4 litres of water every day with most of the water drank embedded in the food eaten. With this comes pressure on water resources which call for sustainable means of using available water resources. This includes consuming less water-intensive products; reduce the scandalous food wastage: 30% of the food produced worldwide is never eaten and the water used to produce it is definitively lost; and produce more food, of better quality, with less water among others.

By and large, the knowledge of our water footprint would greatly enhance our water regimen and the correlation between water and development.

So to say, the important role of water in economic growth can not be over-emphasized. Already, indicators point to the fact that in three decades, the demand for water will exceed supply by 50 percent. If that happens, what would happen to the use of water for sundry uses in agriculture, transportation, etc?

On the one hand, lack of access to safe drinking water is a great public health crisis. It is on record that about 4,500 children die every day from waterborne diseases, which is more than those who die from malaria, HIV-AIDS and tuberculosis combined.
The daily struggle by millions of people to access clean and safe drinking water also hampers development, especially in Nigeria in general and Benue State in particular. This anomaly affects many, from the women who go in search of water to political battles over international rivers to melting icepack and rising sea levels, no one is left out on the long run. Most of the water shortages are caused by the ills of pollution, political unrest, and corruption.

As earlier noted, the availability of water is essential for a healthy economy and a flourishing ecosystem. It is in this light that it becomes pertinent for responsible governments to stop playing politics with the water issue. Rather, balancing the fate of economies with the health of individuals and of the environment as a whole should be paramount.

To this end, all hands have to be on deck to conserve water resources. Little wonder; the World Health Organisation gives the following 10 facts on water:
i.Water scarcity occurs even in areas where there is plenty of rainfall or freshwater. How water is conserved, used and distributed in communities and the quality of the water available can determine if there is enough to meet the demands of households, farms, industry and the environment.
ii.Water scarcity affects one in three people on every continent of the globe. The situation is getting worse as needs for water rise along with population growth, urbanization and increases in household and industrial uses.
iii.Almost one fifth of the world’s population (about 1.2 billion people) live in areas where the water is physically scarce. One quarter of the global population also live in developing countries that face water shortages due to a lack of infrastructure to fetch water from rivers and aquifers.
iv.Water scarcity forces people to rely on unsafe sources of drinking water. It also means they cannot bathe or clean their clothes or homes properly.
v.Poor water quality can increase the risk of such diarrhoeal diseases as cholera, typhoid fever and dysentery, and other water-borne infections. Water scarcity can lead to diseases such as trachoma (an eye infection that can lead to blindness), plague and typhus.
vi.Water scarcity encourages people to store water in their homes. This can increase the risk of household water contamination and provide breeding grounds for mosquitoes - which are carriers of dengue fever, malaria and other diseases.
vii.Water scarcity underscores the need for better water management. Good water management also reduces breeding sites for such insects as mosquitoes that can transmit diseases and prevents the spread of water-borne infections such as schistosomiasis, a severe illness.
viii.Lack of water has driven up the use of wastewater for agricultural production in poor urban and rural communities. More than 10% of people worldwide consume foods irrigated by wastewater that can contain chemicals or disease-causing organisms.
ix. Millennium Development Goal number 7, target 10 aims to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. Water scarcity could threaten progress to reach this target.
x.Water is an essential resource to sustain life. As governments and community organizations make it a priority to deliver adequate supplies of quality water to people, individuals can help by learning how to conserve and protect the resource in their daily lives.

Water is indeed life, so let us all try and keep it clean and safe for drinking and other uses.