World Water Day is celebrated every year on March 22. This year, the UN has designated it the International Year of Cooperation. Since water is a shared resource, conserving it and making it available to all who need it must be done at a community level.
Without cooperation, the Aral Sea would remain a dry lake bed, rice fields would go dry so that suburbanites could have spiffy green lawns, and waterways would become clogged with dead farm animals.
Some quick facts:
- 1.1 billion people live without access to clean drinking water.
- Each of those 1.1 billion people uses less than five gallons of water each day.
- The average American uses 152 gallons of water per day.
- 85% of the world population lives in the driest half of the planet.
- More than 178 million people are currently living under extreme drought, which means they are experiencing widespread crop and pasture losses and shortages of available water.
What Can I Do?
Water conservation is important for all of us, no matter where we live. Blue Living Ideas has many ideas for water conservation around the home and in the landscape.
Donate to charity: water. 100% of your gift goes to building a clean drinking water well in areas that are in desperate need of clean water.
Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki-moon speaks in this short video about the importance of water.
Waterfall photo via Shutterstock