By Ijeoma UKAZU
By 2040, the United Nations, UN, estimates that globally, one in four children will be living in areas of extremely high water stress.
With the current climate scenario, it is predicted that water scarcity will displace between 24 million and 700 million people, by 2030.
In Nigeria, the UN also states that more than 60 million people do not have access to a basic clean water supply. While 78 million children are at the highest risk from a convergence of three water-related threats – inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene, WASH; related diseases; and climate hazards – according to a new UNICEF analysis.
Commenting, the UNICEF Nigeria Chief of WASH, Dr. Jane Bevan, says revealed that “Nigeria ranks second out of 163 countries globally, with the highest risk of exposure to climate and environmental threats. Groundwater levels are also dropping, requiring some communities to dig wells twice as deep as just a decade ago. At the same time, rainfall has become more erratic and intense, leading to floods that contaminate scarce water supplies.”
Experts say, to combat these water challenges, there is an urgent need for efficient water management, but they worried that human action has thrown the global water cycle out of balance, affecting every person, every place, and every ecosystem.
Analysts have said that it is not too late to turn things around, stressing that going forward, the world must value water differently, governed by the common good to ensure equity and inclusive development.
World leaders also add, that to tackle climate matters, the first, is to fix the water problems facing most countries. Calling to action the need for a collective effort to urgently tackle water issues, “the world will fail on the climate crisis and the Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs if the water issues currently faced are not solved.”
To spur global action, the Co-Chairs of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water are developing a blueprint to tackle climate change.
One of the Co-Chairs of the Commission and Senior Minister, Singapore, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, in a statement, explained that what happens locally whether it was a flood, drought, or heat wave, reflects something that is going on globally and the changes in the global hydrological cycle are going to impact all of us locally wherever we are in the world.
Shanmugaratnam adds, “We have a problem because we mismanaged water, we have now breached the planet’s boundaries. The situation we face is urgent.
“Water is part of the solution for some of the most pressing problems we faced. If we can transform the way we manage water, we can also ensure food security, sustainable energy security, and global public health. Water is part of the solution for climate change and biodiversity as well as for peace and security.”
The Director-General of, the World Trade Organization, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala pointed out that there is an urgency to develop new economics of water, adding that, it will help the world reduce water waste, improve water efficiency and provide opportunities for greater water equity.
Okonjo-Iweala who is also a Co-Chair, of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, states that the world is in dare need of a new science of water focused on green water, including water vapours, transpiration of green plants and atmospheric rivers, making water, not just a local resource but one with important regional and even global dimensions.
According to her, “Water efficiency should not be seen as the intention with equity goals. On the contrary, efficiency goals should be what makes possible, the reallocation of water to those who are currently underserved. And we know that if water supply falls short of demand, it would most certainly be the poor who bear this burden.
“Global corporation is essential to success to managing water as a global common good. Just as it is to a successful international response to climate change, fragmentation in the trading system or pullback from international corners threatens to push nations away from the collaborative spirit required not only to keep trade flowing but also to ensure that nations work together and share challenges including water management and availability as well as climate change. Without corporations, there are risks of poverty and a fall in prosperity with developing countries losing out more.
“Developing and emerging nations especially those countries that are water-stressed areas need to: Better manage their water resources to ensure access water for all; Attract financing for the water infrastructure that they need to build to expand access which is why the global commission report put such emphasis on the need for the new economics of water provides incentives for water efficiency and investment in water projects”, she explained.
This call for efficient water management, world leaders say, countries should put global water challenges at the center of how they design their economy.
They said, doing this would create an opportunity for investment, innovation, new types of finance, for new types of symbiotic partnerships that puts the people at the center of those collaborators at the ecosystem solving the greatest water challenges of our time.