Showing posts with label ecosystems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ecosystems. Show all posts

March 23, 2022

World Water Day: Groundwater sustains nearly 50% of world population

 


by Marcela Torres

Growing up in central Chile, I remember visiting my grandma’s summer house in a small beach town. For many years, this locality was not connected to the sanitation grid and whenever we needed water, we would have to get it from the well in the back of the house. Being a child, I was proud each time I was able to lift the bucket by myself! As the town grew, the houses were eventually linked to pipes distributing potable water. But many people around the world still rely on groundwater and wells for their water consumption.

According to the United Nation’s World Water Development Report 2022, launched earlier this week, it is estimated that nearly 50% of the global urban population is supplied from groundwater sources. The publication is the latest in a series developed each year by the organization to mark World Water Day. In 2022, the Day’s celebration focuses on groundwater under the slogan ‘making the invisible visible’, in reference to the fact that groundwater is invisible, but its impact is visible everywhere.

The report highlights that “in countries such as Costa Rica and Mexico, groundwater supplies 70% of households in urban areas, and practically sustains all domestic demand in rural areas.” The publication also states that the Asia-Pacific region is the largest groundwater abstractor in the world, encompassing seven out of the ten countries that abstract the most groundwater: Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey. These countries alone account for approximately 60% of the world’s total groundwater withdrawal.

Why is groundwater important?

Almost all the liquid freshwater in the world is groundwater and most arid areas of the world depend entirely on groundwater. Rivers, lakes, and wetlands are surface manifestations of groundwater. They exchange flow with the groundwater reservoir that feeds them when they need water and takes some of their flow when surface water is present in excess. Additionally, groundwater supplies a large proportion of the water we use for drinking, sanitation, food production, and industrial processes.

Unfortunately, many major aquifers - groundwater reservoirs – around the planet are being depleted or polluted. Depletion can lead to decrease in stream flow, drying of springs or wetlands, loss of vegetation, water-level decline in wells, and land subsidence. Overexploitation of groundwater can lead to land instability, and, in coastal regions, to sea water intrusion under the land. Pollution resulting from human activity, generating chemicals, and wastes that have leaked into the subsurface degrades the quality of groundwater and poses a threat to human and ecological health.

Women and water

Across low-income countries, the availability of a safe and sufficient water supply and improved sanitation facilities has a disproportionate effect on the lives of women and girls for three main reasons. First, women and girls usually bear the responsibility for collecting water, which is often very time-consuming and arduous. Second, women and girls are more vulnerable to abuse and attack while walking to and using a toilet. And third, women have specific hygiene needs during menstruation, pregnancy, and child rearing.

Additionally, as many women are responsible for finding a resource their families need to survive, they may stand in line and wait for water, they may walk long distances to collect water, or they may pay exorbitant amounts of money to secure water. In their efforts to get water for their families, they often face an impossible choice: certain death without water or possible death due to illness from dirty water. Hence, the presence of groundwater has a direct impact on the availability of water and women’s well-being.

Their daily experience is far from the exciting adventure it was for me to extract water from the well in my grandma’s summer house. Protecting groundwater sources is a global obligation, in order to ensure each day fewer people and ecosystems are faced with life-or-death situations that may bring about demise and extinction.