I Miss my Glass of Water!
Just two years back (i.e. in 2006), I read one column on the UN’s initiative to provide access to safe drinking water to every person in the planet by 2015. For the detailed article, you can read the article “Water policy 'fails world's poor'” at BBC.co.uk. Almost after two years, I don’t think either the UNESCO or the local governing bodies have been able to deal with the water crisis, appropriately. The crisis remains similar as it was before two years rather the situation is getting worse day by day. The reasons behind such failure that have been discussed in the article are all manmade and we human beings have been ignoring this fact again and again. Some of the discussed reasons of the failure of the UN’s Water Policy are mentioned below:
- Rapid Changes in Global Climate
- Rapid Urbanization
- Poor Governance
- Illegal Tapping and Leaks
I appreciate the way Barun Mitra (director of Delhi-based think-tank the Liberty Institute) analyzed the UNESCO Water Policy. Of course, we need to deal the crisis in a Bottom-Top approach so that the ground level victims can get benefits from such initiatives. Here follows the map of nations' "Water Footprints":
Though there are some other organizations joined the race to save the water resource and proper management and distribution of safe water, yet the benefits are far away from the deprives. HELP (Hydrology for the Environment, Life and Policy), a joint initiative of the UNESCO and WMO (World Meteorological Organization) taken on the outcomes of the Fifth UNESCO/WMO International Conference on Hydrology (held in February 1999). Here follows the Worldwide HELP Networks:
But there is lot more to do; initiating such programs without proper management can only be resulted in wastage of time, money and resources. We need to work on our side of our own. We need to create micro organizations in our respective localities and have to look after the water management and distribution with the help of departmental authorities. We need to spread the awareness among people regarding how to preserve rain water, how to maintain good sanitation and so on. Otherwise the World War III is inevitable in near future to acquire each other water resources among countries.
