I chose this topic because so many of us take clean water for granted. We feel it is a right to have clean water to drink and shower daily. Water quality affects us all. Access to clean, reliable water is essential to our health and well being, and is a foundation of a thriving community. (Skidegate, 2010)
The lack of access to safe water is directly related to poverty, personally and often times because that government does not have the ability to finance satisfactory water systems. The direct human cost is enormous! Widespread health problems, walking for miles just to get the water, and severe limitations for economic development. Polluted water is estimated to affect the health of more than 1.2 billion people, and contribute to the death of an average 15 million children every year. (Vital, 2005).
The world is on track to meet the United Nations Millenium Developmental Goal (MDG) drinking water target to halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water by 2015. (CDC, 2009).
In Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, nearly 1 billion people in rural areas have no access to improved water supplies. Throughout Africa, rural water services lag far behind urban services. Bottled water is not considered improved due to limitations in the potential quantity, not quality of the water.
References:
Assessing Access to Water and Sanitation, (2009), (CDC) Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, Retrieved March 5, 2012 from the World Wide Web; http://cdc.gov/healthywater/global assessing.html
Skidegate,A., Access to Clean, Reliable Water, Essential to Healthy Nations, 2010, WHO, UNICEF, New York, N.Y.
Vital, W., Inequity in Access to Clean Water, 2005, Unicef, New York, N.Y.
Hello Deb,
ReplyDeleteYou are right that a lot of us take water for granted. I grew up near the Great Lakes, so I think I really do not appreciate it like I should, although I have become more mindful about not wasting it. It is hard to even imagine not having plentiful, clean water.
Thanks for adding some references about the issue!
Tory
I witness this problem every day in Indonesia. On my camp, Chevron treats the water so it's drinkable but outside camp there is no drinkable water. My Indonesian house helpers have wells they take the water from and when it doesn't rain enough they have to fill up water bottles at my house to take to their house. They also have to boil any water they consume. We complain, as developed countries, that plastic bottles are a huge waste of energy but here for example it is the only way for the locals to get drinkable water at times. It's a vicious thing, the lesser than two evils.
ReplyDeleteDeb,
ReplyDeleteIt is very said that water, a neccessity for our survival is so polluted and limited. I recently watched a documentary called Blue Gold describing the rapid loss of fresh water supplies due to political issues. This is an issues that effects the whole world.