Environmental Management: Water Importance

Water is linked to almost everything in the world, it is a precondition for human existence and for the sustainability of the planet.

There are 663 million people with no access to safe water. Women and girls have to walk 6 hours each day to collect water in many countries; each year, over 3 million people die from sanitation or water-related disease, diarrhea, for example, has become the third leading cause of children death; moreover, 1/3 of the schools all over the world don’t have safe water or adequate sanitation.

Over 70% of the Earth surface is water from oceans, rivers, and lakes. From the world total, just a 3% is fresh water and 65% of it is frozen in glaciers. According to the World Health Organization, only 0,007% from the world's total water is safe for consumption and this is what the 7 billion people in the Earth should share.

What's more, this resource is not equally distributed. There are water-rich and poor countries. One of the biggest water-related risks that water poor countries face is the lack of water for industry, farms, and communities. There are at least 36 countries facing extreme risk of scarcity, among which are: Kuwait, Barbados, Antigua & Barbuda, Bahrain, and the Central African Republic. In the other extreme the USA, Canada, Uruguay, Japan, and Cyprus can satisfy the 100% of its water necessities for industry and community. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), is mandatory to generate water distribution policies, due to the fact that current water use policies around the world will soon make it impossible for farmers to produce enough food for the world population, and the hardest hit will certainly be the world’s poorest people.

However, in some countries, the water purification process provided by aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, supply water suitable for drinking, industry, recreation, and wildlife habitat. Ecosystems must be recognized as an integral part of development solutions, but there's a step before: Teach the communities how to consume and preserve water.

Besides, access to water and sanitation are recognized by the United Nations as human rights, reflecting the fundamental nature of these basics in every person’s life. So yes, we have to take care of water. Because as the population increases, the demand increases too, but the amount of clean drinkable water is still the same. And taking care of it doesn't mean to join an organization, but by making a few desitions we can make the difference. Actions have to consider better policies of how to save and avoid wasting; medium and long-term policies of water distribution and production of safe water for the communities because this resource highly essential for the planet's life and development of human communities.

ALERT!: Hurricane Matthew

Hurricane Matthew was a the mayor cyclone of the 2016 year, that hit first Haiti on September 27th., killing 540 people. Then this Category 5th cyclone went to Cuba and the Bahamas islands, arriving to
the eastern coast of US on October 5th.

The states of Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina declared the emergency as soon as the first waves reached St. Augustine and Palm Coast causing floods of 2.5 feet above the ground level.

Plenty of trees were cracked by the strong winds, several buildings were damaged, and floods were unavoidable, the water raised and carried out cars, rubbish and debris by the cost area.

The category of this cyclone increased as it moved forward. It started in the eastern Caribbean and quickly intensified reaching its highest severity between the end of September and early October, becoming the first Category 5th hurricane of the Atlantic, with a strength of 160 mph winds, that took the lives of around 600 people.

The resident of the areas in risk were informed about the potential danger about a week before, most of them took the warnings seriously. In many areas cars got in line for fuel while neighbours looked forward to providing their families food and hardware supplies to board up their houses. In South Carolina, highways were reversed so vehicles could head west away from the storm. In Orlando, Disney parks were closed.

When the disaster reached the cities people couldn’t get out of their houses, the light posts and gensets short-circuits increased fire risk and about 22.000 persons had to be rescued and taken to shelters. The hurricane left a great number of homeless people, the water had ruined the houses, it is estimated that the rainfall in 24hs was equivalent to 3 months of rain felt in US. Due to this fact and the strong winds more than 4.000 flights were cancelled.

On October 10th the cyclone changed its direction to the East returning to the sea and the emergency was over. If it hadn’t, the US would have probably suffered a catastrophe.

Let's Create Our Own Article!

While we worked with natural hazards we divided into grops to select the eruptuion of a volcano, the cause of an earthquake or a tsunami that happened in any part of the world. My parter and I had some interest in a situation that happened in the south of Asia, the earthquake in Nepal that occured this year (2015) on May 25th and 26th. Each group looked for information to make a magazine in a webpage called MadMagz, to write about it and spot and explain relevant details such as when, where, how and why did our investigated hazard happened.

Here is mine! Hope you like it...