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   World Water Day  2013
  
The United Nations’ World Water Day will be observed on March 22.World Water Day is an initiative of United Nations for celebrating the value of freshwater in the world. Events are organised on or around this day to increase people’s awareness about water’s importance in environment, agriculture, health. The theme of world water day 2013 is “Water Cooperation.”
   World Water Day  2012
  
The United Nations has designated March 22nd World Water Day, to focus attention on the importance of safe drinking water and to advocate for the sustainable management of water resources. This year World Water Day 2012 is being observed on Thursday, the 22nd March 2012. 
  The theme of the 2012 World Water Day campaign is “Water and Food Security,” to underscore the essential role that water plays in ensuring food security that can only exist “when all people at all times have both physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their dietary requirements for an active and healthy life.”

   World Water Day  2011
   
World water Day 2011  theme was " Water for Cities: Responding to the Urban Challenge."   Safe drinking water is fundamental to healthy lives and prosperous communities. Every person needs at least twenty liters of water per day for drinking and sanitation needs alone. Yet nearly a billion people world-wide do not have access to drinking water from an improved source, and more than 2.5 billion people do not have access to improved sanitation for adequate disposal of human waste. 
  Rapid urbanization over the last 5 decades is changing Africa's landscape and also generating formidable challenges for supplies of water and sanitation services, according to a new UN report released on March 21, 2011.The Rapid Response Assessment by the United Nations Environment Programme  and UN-Habitat indicates that urban centres in Africa are growing at a faster rate than anywhere else in the world. Today 40 percent of Africa?s one billion people live in urban areas --60 percent in slums-- where water supplies and sanitation are severely inadequate, according to the report that was launched to coincide with World Water Day.. 
  
World Water Day  2010
  On  March 22, 2010 world celebrate  the 17th annual United Nations- sponsored water awareness day. Clean Water for a Healthy World is the theme for World  Water Day 2010. World water Day renewed emphasis should be put to curb unrestrained groundwater exploitation and make water conservation an issue of national priority.  These can include the usual suspects, such as rivers and lakes, as well as subterranean aquifers that so many rely on for drinking water. Although water covers more than 70 percent of the planet's surface, only about 0.3 percent of surface water is in rivers and lakes, and underground aquifers hold about only another 1.6 percent of the earth's water.  
   More than half of the world's population lives in river basins shared with other countries, according to the U.N., yet only 16 countries have signed the group's Convention on Non- navigational Uses of International Watercourses 
   
The United Nations forecasts that by 2030, nearly half of the world's population will be living in areas of "high water stress". Climate change will cause droughts in some areas, and floods in others, scientists say. In Africa alone, between 75 million and 250 million people may experience increased water stress due to climate change by 2020, according to a UN report out last week. Areas of very dry land have more than doubled since the 1970s, and more intense droughts have been seen over the last 10 years.  Water scarcity will see as many as 700 million people displaced, the report warns. Rising demand for energy and meat will also exacerbate water shortages - it takes four times more water to produce a kilo of beef than a kilo of wheat. advertisement  

    Water Drop
The theme of the 2013 World Water Day campaign is “Water Cooperation". 
    


 Clean water from water fall
  Safe drinking water is fundamental
 to healthy lives and prosperous communities.

  


    
  Dry Land without water 
 Unrestrained exploitation of groundwater, global warming and climate change, less rainfall and environmental pollution are the major causes of water crisis worldwide.

 

  World Water Day History
  The  observance of International World Water Day (WWD) was an initiative of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) that was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The event was first observed in 1993. On July 28, 2010, the UN General Assembly declared access to clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right. International law and some national constitutions similarly regard access to safe and sufficient water as a human right.

   Water Crisis
  Unrestrained exploitation of groundwater, global warming and climate change, less rainfall and environmental pollution are the major causes of water crisis worldwide. As per the recent World Bank Report the water level in India has been going down consistently. 
  A total of 880 million people around the globe do not have access to clean water, while 2.7 billion lack proper sanitation facilities, the Red Cross said on March 22, 2010. Climate change, rapid unplanned. urbanisation and migration are increasingly having a negative effect on the poorest countries in the world, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said in Kuala Lumpur. “The time to act is now,” said Jane Edgar, the group's water, sanitation and hygiene promotion coordinator for South-East Asia. He said  “Access to clean water, sanitation and health education should not be all about luck, depending on where you were born. It is a human right that should be given to everyone, rich or poor,.” 
  The UN figures indicates that, with a billion plus people worldwide living in areas where water is in short supply and more than a third of the global population lacking sanitation facilities. The rate is which global water consumption is rising - more than twice as fast as the rate of population growth. Diminishing water supplies are clearly due to the contamination of water ways and underground water by untreated sewage and waste water discharge by enterprises and urban drainage system. At this rate, the World Bank estimates that three billion people will not get any safe drinking water by 2035. 
  In developing countries, eighty percent of all wastewater is discharged untreated, often because of lack of proper regulation and resources to enforce existing laws. This leads to greater illness and lives cut short. According to the World Health Organization, each year, an estimated four billion people get sick with diarrhea as a result of drinking unsafe water, inadequate sanitation, and poor hygiene. Nearly two million people die from diarrhea each year, and many of them children under the age of five, poor, and living in the developing world.
 
USAID, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation
  The United States invests hundreds of millions of dollars every year in water supply and sanitation around the world. The U. S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation have a number of programs to increase access to clean water for those in need, and to improve water delivery and irrigation systems.

   Water Conservation
   About 80% of water used daily in homes is discharged as waste water into the sewage system. Apart from the water used for flushing toilets, a bigger quantity of waste water is generated from the kitchen, bathroom, and wash-basins that can be possibly re-used, after minor treatment, for gardening and flushing purpose.
   It is still not too late to switch alternative technology like low-flush toilets or improved pit  latrines, recycling of water, waste water treatment etc.  Water conservation must also be practiced more efficiently in the fields, using drip irrigation to ensure all the water gets to the crops. Even sewage water could be treated with soda to recycle it and irrigate crops like cotton while water from domestic uses could irrigate vegetable beds. The planner should  consider using technology to exploit the country's long coastline so that saline water could be made portable. 
  
Rain water harvesting
   Rain water harvesting is a simple technique in which the rainwater that falls on the surface or roof top is guided to borwells or pits to recharge the underground water. Groundwater recharging process  technique has immense potential and now used in diffrent parts of the country by several institutions, industries, housing complexes and government bodies. Experts say rainwater harvesting structures should be installed at every crossroad and roadside drains should be present to rejuvenate groundwater. 
   Apart from rainwater harvesting, there is an urgent need to use recycled water. Recycled water should be supplied to those who are using more than 50,000 litres of water per day, to new areas and industries.
 WATER WARS 
  In the future it will be water wars as the scarcity of water has inflamed existing conflicts. Nearly four billion people live in countries where there is serious political tension over lakes and rivers that cross international borders. Current hotspots include India and Bangladesh; the Middle East; and China and its neighbours.
According to Fred Pearce, author of the book When The Rivers Run Dry, water is one of the defining crises of the 21st century. "As more and more countries run short of water, the threat of wars over water will grow," he warns.. Recently an award-winning new film, Blue Gold: World Water Wars, gets its Scottish premiere at Strathclyde University. Its publicity material asks: "Past civilisations have collapsed from poor water management. Can the human race survive?"
 
Water crisis in India
  India's population of more than a billion people is widely expected to overtake the population of China by the middle of the 21st century. Both countries depend on a handful of major waterways originating in the Himalayan mountain range. For hundreds of millions of Indians, lack of water is not a question of geopolitics, but lack of infrastructure for water delivery and purification. India's challenge in delivering basic sanitation and clean drinking water supplies to the majority of its citizens.   

 
  

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