The water crisis

The UN estimates that each person requires 20-50 litres of water a day, for drinking, cooking, cleaning and keeping themselves clean. However, all over the world, over 1 billion people lack safe, clean drinking water in the basic necessary quantities, and I can assure you that number is not going down with the current rate of human population growth. So, what can we do about it?

Firstly, we need to divide the problem into 3 separate parts: quality, infrastructure and cost-effectiveness. It is estimated that about 1.8 million people die yearly from deadly, diarrheal diseases like cholera and typhoid, which are transmitted through polluted water. Which by the way, could be easily treated/eradicated if the water was so uncontaminated. Children under five, elderly or malnourished people, are the most susceptible to death as millions of cases are unregistered or not deadly. Therefore, estimates show that these people might get infected up to three times a year as a consequence of taking in absurd levels of these bacterias and viruses.

One of the main difficulties in procuring clean water in distant, unurbanized locations is to obtain not only freshwater but clean fresh water. Most of the freshwater found near the surface is intensely polluted or is only seasonally available.In the 20th century, researchers turned to determine an answer in deep underground clean freshwater storages spread along the rock bed. They dug up wells, and it was considered by the locals to be the answers to all their problems. 20 years later, most of the wells are either dried up or only partially operational, as intense, unsustainable use of the wells did not allow them to replenish their storage of water quickly enough; confronting us with the identical problem again, what can we do to resolve it?

Another critical factor to consider is that these people are often citizens from LEDC (less economically developed countries), so corrupt governments frequently do not spend substantially on infrastructure for sanitation or water supply, hanging their people up to dry. That is why foreign aid provided, should be donated to NGOs who will assure us that the money is spent wisely, even if it is just enough to supply some basic water filters to the communities. A basic well-designed water supply infrastructure represents the first step in decreasing deaths caused by diarrheal diseases ingested through polluted water.

Lastly, Cost-effectiveness. A project for water filtration in these areas of extreme poverty has to be not only effective but cheap, with low costs of maintenance, easy transportation and self-sustainable. All of these specifications narrow down the possibilities, however, scientists have tackled these problems by resorting to renewable energy sources or filters using objects found in their environments.

One of the biggest benefits associated with access to clean drinking water is the opportunity for education. When someone’s daily task is to get water over 5 miles from their home, they spend most of their time and energy doing it. This burden is normally done by women and children, but mostly women and girls. These girls are overlooked by their society and culture as inferior or less important than men, thus they are many times deprived of their human right of education; whereas their male siblings will most likely be not. According to a project named Drawdown, out of 80 ways to help stop climate change, educating girls came in 6th, surpassing things like solar farms and electric vehicles.

What is being done to resolve all of this? Although most people in developed countries receive access to clean, safe drinking water directly from home in their taps; many people in undeveloped countries do not. They resort to inventions like ceramic water filters and life packs to survive. While the ceramic water filters are made from fired clay and operate using tiny pores which are small enough to remove virtually all bacteria and viruses present in the water, life packs operate using the solar water disinfection process which consists of absorbing sunlight energy and using an electric current to deliver electrolytic processes which disinfect the water.

Therefore, solutions like the ceramic water filters or the life sack can merely provide enough water for them to drink, with a limit of 3-5 litres per day. We require a more lasting and effective solution as the UN’s requirement is at least 20 litres of clean freshwater, per family, per day. There is a difference between surviving and living. Waking up and walking more than 10 miles just to acquire small buckloads of poor quality water, is not only unacceptable, it is inhumane.