Water Is A Human Right

Lack of safe water is a public health emergency, draining developing countries of health, productivity, gender equality, education and hope. Over 1 billion people on our planet do not have access to safe, clean drinking watersomething every person who lives in an industrialized nation takes for granted with each swig of the unappreciatedly precious substance.

Water is a precious thing. Of all of the water on Earth, only 2.5% is freshwater. Of this freshwater, 70% is locked away in polar ice caps, 30% lies underground, and a mere 0.007% is actually available for human consumption. Unfortunately, a large portion of that .007% is too contaminated, unreachable, or expensive for many populations to drink.

Water, Earth's most precious resource, serves simultaneously as habitat, nourishment and cleanser. Brazil's Pantanal River, for example, is home to over 5,000 different species (including humans) who rely on its water for life. It is not only a vital waterway for man, but an essential filter for the impurities he leaves behind.

Underground aquifers, dozens of miles deep and hundreds of miles wide, are the Earth's second-largest reserve of fresh water. Filled over billions of years, they are today being drained at two to four times their natural recharge rate.

The Aral Sea has lost two-thirds of its volume becuase its source rivers were diverted for cotton irrigation during the Soviet era. Once the fourth largest lake in the world, it is now a dusty graveyard of rusting shipwrecks.

Water is life. Yet 4,500 children die each day from waterborne illnesses. One in 6 people lacks access to safe water and fewer than half of all households have sanitation facilities. THe UN has proposed Millennium Development Goal 7- reducing by half the proportion of people without these essentials - is not only attainable but critical to the lives of children.

More than 2 billion people worldwide rely on wells for their water. As water tables continue to drop, many devote countless hours to collecting and hauling the valuable resource. The pits frequented on Pate Island by Kenyan villagers in this photo are less than 300 feet from the ocean's edge, yielding a brackish but drinkable water.

Girls and women bear the largest share of the worlds water burden. They walk on average 6 km a day, carrying 20 litres of water, missing out on education and productive work. The lack of opportunities for women and girls due to water collection severely furthers the cycle of poverty, overpopulation and unsustainable development in developing countries worldwide.

The lack of fresh water in this village located in Peru has reduced the community to slum-like conditions. Children are uneducated due to lack of facilities and live in an extremely unhealthy environment.

Disgusted students of Miyun elementary school in Beijing discover the dirty condition of a water sample taken from their local reservoir. Twenty-five to thirty-three percent of Chinese do not have access to safe drinking water.

Residents of a slum in Delhi scramble for the water that is delivered to them daily. The camp is home to approximately 4,000 migrant workers, but lacks a clean water supply, so they are dependant on public as well as private trucks to bring it to them.

Ice fishermen work their lines on Russia's Ural River, in the shadow of Lenin Steelworks. Worried that the fish are too contaminated to eat, many of these winter anglers send their catch to distant markets for sale, exacerbating the depletion of world fisheries and unsafe world food distribution.

In the poorest countries, 50% of people lack safe water due in large part to failures in environmental and waste-management policies. The above photo shows a small boy fishing for what will be undoubtedly contaminated shrimp in a sewage-infested pond in Haiti.

Because water in Mumbai, India is too expensive for the poor, many residents of this slum rely on leaks found or created, in the massive tubes that carry water to more affluent neighborhoods for their own water supply. The poor of the city avoid the garbage and human waste surrounding their dwellings by walking on top of the pipelines.

Two Sudanese boys drink with specially fitted plastic tubes provided by the Carter Center to guard against the waterborne larvae which are responsible for guinea worm disease. The program has distributed millions of tubes and has reduced the spread of this debilitating disease by 70%.

Rural inhabitants are far less likely than city dwellers to have even basic toilets. In South Asia, only 5% of rural households have access to sanitation.

The waters of the Niger River Delta are used for defecating, bathing, fishing and garbage. Despite the fact that oil companies have removed more than $400 billion of wealth out of the wetland, local residents have little to show for it. They remain in absurd levels of poverty without access to proper bathroom facilities.

Children in developing countries are afraid of using outhouses and the like because they are dark and smelly and they fear falling into the hole. For this school in India, WaterAid, a British NGO dedicated to delivering safe domestic water, provided funding to build child-friendly toilets.

Studies show that girls are more likely to attend and finish school when they have access to latrines that separate and equal to boys facilities. Building facilities in schools for girls is a huge step in breaking the cycle of poverty in water scarce developing nations.

The Chilukwa Primary School in Malawi provides its students with a sound education, but until recently the school had no running water or bathrooms. The Peer Water Exchange, a platform for crafting local solutions to specific water problems, helped secure funding for a local organization to build a community tap, latrines and bathing facilities.

A lack of clean water usually results in a lack of sanitation. With safe water good hygiene can be promoted. Simple hand washing can help reduce diarrhoea cases of death in water poor communities by up to 40%.

Filtering water through a clean cloth helps prevent guinea worm disease, a waterborne illness that used to claim thousands of lives every day, now eradicated in all but 12 African nations.

For over 40 years, UNICEF has delivered safe water and sanitation to help children survive and thrive. The Mark II pump, developed in India, has transformed village life for all ages across Asia and Africa.

Sanitation, the controlling of human waste, requires clean water access as well as thorough planning. In Zambia, community leaders draw a map of the village to determine latrine sites, hoping to eradicate water-borne illnesses caused by a waste contaminated water supply.

This Vietnamese boy refreshes himself with some water that's been inexpensively provided to his community following the creation of a water system funded by Blue Planet Run Foundation and PWX. Hopefully one day in the near future every child can enjoy such a luxury. With the help of donations of time and money by people like you, the human right to safe water can finally be realized!