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Water – Resource to be Protected

“Access to safe water is a fundamental human need and, therefore, a basic human right".

Contaminated water jeopardizes both the physical and social health of all people. It is an affront to human dignity.” Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General.


Water – essential for life

Many countries and organizations around the world have committed themselves to stress water related topics. Uncountable programs, plans and declarations deal with planned improvement of people's access to water. Water is nowadays one of the most important drivers of quality of life but:

  2.6 bn people (42% of the world's population) have no access to sanitation

  Drinking water pollution and lack of sanitation services are the main sources for diseases like diarrhea, typhoid, cholera or soil-transmitted helminthiasis.

  In developing countries, 90% of the deaths of children between age 0-5 are attributable to diarrheal diseases and 2 million people die every year from diarrheal diseases

While water is a fundamental human need, it is also an important primary or secondary resource for manufacturing processes and agriculture. Therefore, access to water has a significant impact on the economical development of regions. Today at least 70% of all fresh water is used in agriculture for irrigation.

The role of wastewater treatment

Due to the growing population, industrialization and urbanization, there is going to be an increasing imbalance between fresh water demand and fresh water availability for many regions in the world. It is without doubt necessary to primarily reduce fresh water consumption to increase water availability and access. But some regions especially in Northern Africa and the Near East and parts of South Africa, Mexico, China and India will still suffer from water scarcity. The number of people affected may rise up to 5.5 bn over the next 25 years.

Natural waters have an inherent self-cleaning mechanism but their capacity to cope with pollution is limited. Hence, proper wastewater treatment is particularly important for regions with water shortages but for environmental and health reasons for all other countries as well.

Comprehensive wastewater treatment based on state-of-the-art technologies can make a significant contribution both to increase fresh water availability (less pollution) and to reduce fresh water consumption (use of treated water).

All data taken from WHO report „Right for Water 2003”

 

Water
source of conflict

Water is a basic element for life. Because of that it has also always been a source of major conflicts especially in regions with shortages of supply. Examples of water sources that were the center of current and past conflicts are River Jordan, River Nile, Lake Aral and River Euphrat. Experts even regard water as the number one reason for conflicts in the future. Today, people fight for oil, in the future they might go to war for access to water. Near east regions (except Maghreb zone) may be most affected. The past has shown that the issue of concurrent usage of water has intensified existing crisis and conflicts in this region.


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