Siddarth Dubey
It’s a day to make a difference for the global population who suffer from water related issues. It’s aday to prepare for how we manage water in the future. It’s a day to celebrate water.
In ‘The Future We Want’, the outcome document of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, June 2012), United Nations Member States clearly highlighted the importance of good management of wastewater to support the future sustainable development agenda.
The world is undergoing signifcant demographic and social changes, with urbanization and migration being two of the most important issues. This will bring to bear increasing inuences on the production of wastewater. The patterns of urbanization will see, in some areas, almost explosive growth in the secondary urban centres, in many countries. Although, on the one hand, this may be seen as problematic, from the point of view of collection and treatment, it will pave the way for an exciting opportunity for decentralised collection and treatment and (as is the case with most forms of waste, collection, treatment and safe reuse as close as possible to the point of production) will be more economically attractive. On the negative side, if urban sprawl is allowed to encourage discharge of waste water from small scale manufacturing enterprises, unplanned settlements and medical industries, this in itself will seriously affect health of local populations.
According to the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation, at least 1.8 billion people world-wide are estimated to drink water that is faecally contaminated. An even greater number drink water which is delivered through a system without adequate protection against sanitary hazards. Guidelines for Drinking-Water Quality recommend that faecal indicator bacteria (FIB), preferably E. coli or alternatively thermotolerant coliform (TTC), should not be detectable in any 100 ml drinking water sample (WHO 2011). An adequate protection against sanitary hazards can for example be public taps or standpipes, tube wells or boreholes, protected dug wells, protected springs and rainwater collection.
During 2013 the UN-Water Senior Programme Managers developed the ‘UN-Water Strategy 2014-2020’. The Strategy provides a common vision and framework for UN-Water action. It articulates how the UN system through UN-Water will respond to the major global, regional and national water-related challenges in a more coordinated and effective manner. The UN-Water Strategy to 2020 was formally adopted in early 2014.
In the context of the Rio+20 outcomes and of the changes and challenges towards 2015 and beyond, the fundamental role of water to address critical issues such as health, the environment, gender and human rights, climate change, energy security and food security, and to contribute to poverty eradication and sustainable development in general, has been recognised. It is therefore now an opportune moment for UN-Water to set out a new Strategy to 2020 to be able to continue to respond to needs and demands of the UN system and of Member States in a new development framework.
The challenge of the Decade is to focus attention on action-oriented activities and policies that ensure the long-term sustainable management of water resources, in terms of both quantity and quality, and include measures to improve sanitation.
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