March 22 is World Water Day.
“There are 7 billion people to feed on the planet today and another 2 billion are expected to join by 2050. Statistics say that each of us drinks from 2 to 4 litres of water every day, however most of the water we ‘drink’ is embedded in the food we eat: producing 1 kilo of beef for example consumes 15,000 litres of water while 1 kilo of wheat ’drinks up’ 1,500 litres.
“When a billion people in the world already live in chronic hunger and water resources are under pressure we cannot pretend the problem is ‘elsewhere’. Coping with population growth and ensuring access to nutritious food to everyone call for a series of actions we can all help with:
- follow a healthier, sustainable diet
- consume less water-intensive products
- reduce the scandalous food wastage: 30% of the food produced worldwide is never eaten and the water used to produce it is definitively lost!
- produce more food, of better quality, with less water.“
There is some good news on the water front. As I have blogged, the world is well on the way to reducing by 50% the number of people without access to clean drinking water (884 million) or basic sanitation (2.6 billion). The world will meet or even exceed the drinking water target by 2015 if current trends continue. By that time, an estimated 86 per cent of the population in developing regions will have gained access to improved sources of drinking water, up from 71 per cent in 1990. Four regions — Northern Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Eastern Asia and South-Eastern Asia — have already met the target.
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