Today is World Water Day!

Today (22 March 2024) is World Water Day, which raises awareness and inspires action to tackle the water and sanitation crisis, with this years theme focusing on "Water for Peace".

World Water Day became a United Nations (UN) observance day in 1993. It seeks to focus attention on the global water crisis and raise awareness of the 2.2 billion people living without access to safe water.

Water for peace

Water can create peace or spark conflict. When water is scarce or polluted, or when people have unequal or no access, tensions can rise between communities and countries.

More than three billion people worldwide depend on water that crosses national borders. However, only 24 countries have cooperation agreements for all their shared water.

As climate change impacts increase and populations grow, there is an urgent need within and between countries, to unite around protecting and conserving our most precious resource.

Public health and prosperity, food and energy systems, economic productivity and environmental integrity, all rely on a well-functioning and equitably managed water cycle.

When we cooperate on water, we create a positive ripple effect by fostering harmony, generating prosperity, and building resilience to shared challenges.

We must act upon the realisation that water is not a resource to be used and competed over, it is a human right, intrinsic to every aspect of life. This World Water Day, we all need to unite around water and use water for peace, laying the foundations of a more stable and prosperous tomorrow.

Key water facts

For World Water Day the UN provided some key facts on water:

• 2.2 billion people still live without safely managed drinking water, including 115 million people who drink surface water;
• roughly half of the world's population is experiencing severe water scarcity for at least part of the year;
• water-related disasters have dominated the list of disasters over the past 50 years and account for 70% of all deaths related to natural disasters;
• transboundary waters account for 60% of the world's freshwater flows, and 153 countries have territory within at least one of the 310 transboundary river and lake basins and inventoried 468 transboundary aquifer systems;
• only 24 countries report that all their transboundary basins are covered by cooperation arrangements.

Take part in World Water Day

The UN will launch its "2024 World Water Development Report: Water for Prosperity and Peace" today, which will describe how developing and maintaining a secure and equitable water future underpins prosperity and peace for all, and how poverty and inequality, social tensions, and conflict can amplify water insecurity.

It calls attention to the complex and interlinked relationships between sustainable water management, prosperity and peace, describing how progress in one dimension can have positive, often essential, repercussions on the others.

You can watch the launch of the report during the live stream of the official celebrations of World Water Day at 12pm here.