WATER FOR LIFE WORLDWIDE
            First the snow and then the rain – plenty of both in northwest Illinois this past year. Water seems so plentiful to us that it is hard to realize that, at any given time, available fresh water amounts to only one percent of all the world’s water. The rest is frozen or salt water. And that one percent is all there is – our fresh water supply simply gets recycled.
            Recycling of the fresh water supply comes with evaporation and precipitation resulting from the water cycle (hydrologic cycle). For us, in our part of the world, rainfall is about 34 inches per year. For other populated places on earth it may be only one inch per year as in Cairo, Egypt. In other places it is much more. Asia supports more than half the world’s population with only 36 percent of global fresh water resources, according to the United Nations.
            In a book published in 1998, Tapped Out, Paul Simon, a past Illinois Senator, pointed out that the world’s population is increasing rapidly but our water supply is constant. “Compounding those grim realities is the fact that per capita world water consumption is rising twice as fast as the world’s population.” He adds, “You do not have to be an Einstein to understand that we are headed toward a potential calamity.”
Simon pointed out that political leadership on water issues tends to be shortsighted. Perhaps there is some significance to the fact that the 191 United Nations member states at the Millenium Summit in 2000, set specific targets for reducing poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women by 2015. Among these targets, governments agreed to reduce by half the proportion of people (1.5 billion people by 2015) without access to safe drinking water. A later agreement included reducing by half the number of people lacking improved sanitation.
            In 2005, when the UN began the “Water for Life” decade, Secretary General of the UN, Kofi A. Annan, said: “Water is essential for life. Yet many millions of people around the world face water shortages. Many millions of children die every year from water-borne diseases. And drought regularly afflicts some of the world’s poorest countries. The world needs to respond much better. We need to increase water efficiency, especially in agriculture. We need to free women and girls from the daily chore of hauling water, often over great distances. We must involve them in decision-making on water management. We need to make sanitation a priority… And we must show that water resources need not be a source of conflict.”
“The world’s water resources are our lifeline for survival, and for sustainable development in the 21st century.” Annan concludes. “ Together, we must mange them better.” 
You can find more information at www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/

Della Moen, Earth Team Volunteer, NRCS/Stephenson Soil and Water
Conservation District, an equal opportunity provider and employer, 04/30/08
(for publication on 05/10/08 in the Journal-Standard, Freeport, Illinois).
Della can be reached at info@stephensonswcd.org