World Water Day 2019: Shocking Facts About Earth's Most Precious Resource
Unsafe water kills more people than disasters and conflicts.
March 22 is World Water Day, and the campaign is drawing attention to the difficulties some of the planet’s most vulnerable people face in accessing the precious resource.
The United Nations launched World Water Day in 1993, designating safe access to water for all by 2030 as one of its Sustainable Development Goals.
This year, the theme is “leaving no one behind.” The body hopes to raise awareness of and address the fact that marginalized individuals can have the most trouble finding safe water. That includes children, women, refugees, indigenous peoples and disabled people, according to the U.N. Those who have precarious living conditions can also suffer.
The occasion brings to light some startling facts and statistics. The U.N. says as many as 2.1 billion people have no safe water at home. And almost two-thirds of the world’s people have problems finding water at least one month of the year. Of those who use unsafe water, some 80 percent live in rural areas.
One in four schoolchildren doesn’t have drinking water at school and is forced to use unprotected sources or not drink water at all.
If trends continue, an estimated 700 million people across the world could be forced to leave their homes by 2030 because of lack of access to water, the U.N. said.
https://www.newsweek.com/world-wate...s-about-earths-most-precious-resource-1371140
