International Water Day

The global water crisis affects us all, yet women are disproportionately affected compared to men. For this reason, the central theme of this year's World Water Day is water and gender, focusing on access to clean water as a human right and on the essential prerequisites for achieving gender equality.

World Water Day is observed annually on March 22. Its aim is to focus on the availability of freshwater and the sustainable management of freshwater resources. UNESCO leads global efforts to understand, protect, and sustainably manage water, combining scientific research with practical solutions and assisting countries in monitoring groundwater and adapting to climate change. This year’s World Water Day focuses on UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 5 and 6: gender equality and clean water and sanitation.

The water crisis is a crisis for women.

In places where clean drinking water is scarce or unavailable near the home, women suffer the most. They are the ones who collect and manage water and care for those who have fallen ill from unsafe drinking water; in doing so, they lose time, safety, and opportunities. Furthermore, women are often excluded from decisions regarding water management. 

Globally, more than a billion women, representing over a quarter of all women, lack access to safe drinking water; furthermore, in countries where water is not available in the home, women are responsible for collecting it in two out of every three households, spending nearly three times as much time on this task as men. It is evident that inequality prevails in water resource management, making it critically important for women to participate in decision-making. When women have an equal say in decisions, services become more accessible, sustainable, and efficient.

Water is a vital resource.

Almost every aspect of our lives depends on the availability of water: food security, our health, human settlements, energy production, industrial development, economic growth, and ecosystems. Consequently, our very existence is highly vulnerable to climate change and dwindling water supplies.

Over the past century, human water consumption has risen significantly due to population growth, economic development, and changing usage patterns. Generally, water availability is seasonal, with periods of abundance alternating with drought, which is a natural phenomenon. However, climate change brings increasingly extreme weather conditions, such as heatwaves and severe storms; these alter existing climate and ecosystems by prolonging drought periods and destroying biodiversity, thereby depleting the freshwater resources available to us.

Climate change puts various ecosystems, but especially forests and wetlands, at risk, thereby diminishing the ecosystem services they provide, including natural water purification, carbon sequestration and storage, and flood mitigation. The loss of these critical services further exacerbates climate change, as atmospheric greenhouse gas levels rise and weather conditions become even more extreme. It is an endless cycle that we may soon no longer be able to break.

Water covers over 70% of the Earth's surface; of this, only 2.5% is fresh water, and accessible, usable fresh water accounts for a mere 0.3% of that. The obligation to conserve water and use it sustainably rests with us all. We all bear the responsibility of ensuring that future generations have water to consume. We all bear the responsibility of ensuring that every human being and animal has water to consume. Live and let live.

| Where water flows, equality grows