Students on Ice Blog

World Water Day: March 22, 2010

The international observance of World Water Day is an initiative that grew out of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro.

Every year, 1,500 cubic kilometres of waste water are produced globally. While waste and waste water can be reused productively for energy and irrigation, it usually is not. In developing countries 80 percent of all waste is being discharged untreated, because of lack of regulations and resources. And population and industrial growth add new sources of pollution and increased demand for clean water to the equation. Human and environmental health, drinking and agricultural water supplies for the present and future are at stake, still water pollution rarely warrants mention as a pressing issue.

To do something about that UN-Water has chosen Clean Water for a Healthy World as theme for World Water Day 2010. The overall goal of the World Water Day on March 22, 2010 campaign is to raise the profile of water quality at the political level so that water quality considerations are made alongside those of water quantity.

UNEP has responsibility for taking the lead in 2010, UN-Water announced at a session during the Stockholm World Water Week in August 2009. Keep an eye on their site.

Water quality: theme of World Water Day 2010

It is still a reality that an estimated 1.1 billion people rely on unsafe drinking-water sources. Therefore the theme of World Water Day 2010 is focusing on raising awareness of water quality under the theme “Clean Water for a Healthy World”. IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre offers a wide selection of documents looking at the different aspects of water quality such as water treatment, health and technology. This information is for instance, available via the IRC digital library, the Source Newsletter and on the IRC web site.

In the digital library 22 documents show up after typing water quality and health in the search box. You can click on the links to access the publications. Go to the digital library documents.

The Source Newsletter also regularly publishes articles on water quality and you can do a search in the most recent issues to find information on this topic from around the world. Source news items selected.

There are a number of practical publications on the IRC web site that you can download and read. There is an FAQ sheet on household water treatment.

The booklet Smart Water Solutions gives examples of small-scale innovative technologies to increase access to safe drinking water.

The popular publication ‘Small Community Water Supplies: Technology, people and partnership’ links water supply science and technology with the specific needs of small communities in developing countries. It has one chapter dealing with water quality and quantity and gives guidelines for different levels of service (Chapter 4). And another chapter deals with water treatment (Chapter 12).

For more information, visit http://www.worldwaterday2010.info

71% of Earth is Water