Almost 6,500 participants, including a hundred ministers and a dozen heads of state and government, will meet at a United Nations water conference from Wednesday to Friday.
“Humanity has blindly embarked on a dangerous path.” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sounded the alarm before the start of a United Nations water conference on March 22 in New York. It must make it possible to respond to the needs of billions of vulnerable people in the face of a “looming” global water crisis, according to the UN-Water and Unesco report released on Tuesday.
In an attempt to reverse the trend and hope to ensure access to drinking water or toilets for all by 2030, targets set in 2015, some 6,500 participants will gather through Friday. Among them are a hundred ministers and a dozen heads of state and government.
“We are all suffering the consequences”
“Vampiric overconsumption and overdevelopment, unsustainable exploitation of water resources, pollution and uncontrolled global warming are draining drop by drop of this lifeblood for humanity,” pounded Antonio Guterres in a news conference.
Dramatic situations (lack of water, excess water, floods, contaminated water) are legion in many places on earth. And “we are all suffering the consequences,” says Antonio Guterres. “How many people will be affected by this global water crisis is a matter of scenario,” the report’s lead author Richard Connor told AFP.
“If nothing is done, between 40-50% of the population will still have no access to sanitation and around 20-25% to clean drinking water.”
Richard Connor, lead author of the UN Water and Unesco Report
at AFP
In a world where freshwater use has been growing at nearly 1% per year for the past 40 years, the UN Water report puts water scarcity first, which is “spreading across the board” and worsening with the impact of the global Warming. Around 10% of the world’s population lives in a country where water scarcity has reached high or critical levels. “About half the world’s population” suffers from “severe” water shortages for at least part of the year, according to the UN climate change experts (IPCC) report released on Monday.
Two billion people drink contaminated water
The big problem: the contamination of the available water due to missing or inadequate sanitary facilities. At least two billion people drink water contaminated with feces, exposing themselves to cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio. Exposure to drugs, chemicals, pesticides, microplastics or nanomaterials is also singled out.
The situation also reveals inequalities. “Wherever you are, if you are rich enough you will manage to have water, notes Richard Connor, the poorer you are, the more vulnerable you are to these crises.” “We have broken the water cycle,” Henk said Ovink, special envoy for water in the Netherlands, told AFP. “We must act now because water insecurity undermines food security, health, energy security or urban development and social issues,” he added. “It’s now or never, a generation’s chance.”