We shower, wash the pavement or our car, water the plants, fill the swimming pool etc but not everyone has this privilege by just turning on a tap.
Advert for a shower company (photo © Green Diosa)
Take into account this data:
Water like the air we breathe, is fundamental to all aspects of life on earth, human, animal and plant life and helps the sustainability of the ecosystem.
The right to drinking water and sanitation is an internationally recognised human right. An essential requirement for other human rights such as the right to life and dignity, food and adequate housing, the right to health and well-being, the right to healthy working and environmental conditions.
Lack of access: more than 1,800 million people do not have access to quality water good enough and safe enough for human consumption. Many people in the world do not enjoy the right to water in terms of access, sufficient, quantity, quality, regularity, security and affordability. There are communities where due to gender women are the most affected. Inequality also depends on whether they are richer or poorer sectores of the population.
More than a third of the world’s population – approximately 2.4 billion people – do not use improved sanitation facilities; of these, 1 billion people still defecate outside (WHO / UNICEF, 2015). An rise in problems related to availability of fresh water is predicted up until 2050. 2.3 billion people, more than 40$ of the world’s population are expected to live in areas with severe water shortages, especially in northern and southern Africa and South and Central Asia.
Climate change and overexploitation of water resources exacerbate threats to water access. The frequency, intensity of extreme weather conditions are expected to increase. Globally, ground water use is increasing by 1% to 2% a year (WWAP, 2012). Global demand for fresh water is expected to increase 55% due to growing demand from the manufacturing industry (400%), thermal electricity generation (140%) and domestic use (130%).
Women have a fundamental role in the provision, management and administration of water that is recognised internationally.
In some regions women (and girls) are responsible for carrying water to their homes. This is a daily job and no one pays them to do it.
It is in a way an obligation imposed by tradition in some communities. It involves a lot of effort on their part, in reducing the time they could spend working to receive money in exchange and participate in the labour market. In the case of girls, it reduces the time they could go to school (UNICEF) (ILO, 2013a; UNDP, 2014). In some less developed countries they walk at least six kilometres per day, carrying 20 litres of water. Droughts, floods and deforestation increase the time they must spend to accomplish this task.
At its 55th session, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW stated that access to drinking water and adequate sanitary facilities (access to toilets) and only for women is a factor that will allow women to join the labour market. This is related to gender equality, and an adequate and decent standard of living. In addition, the menstrual needs of women must be taken into account.
Water pumps near schools: in some communities, water supply pumps are installed as a way to ease the burden on women. Many of these pumps are located near schools as a way to incentivise children to go to school and also to find water for their family. Unfortunately not all communities have the resources to buy a pump, in others it breaks often and they cannot fix it or they are in a poor state of repair.
Hand-dug water wells: these exist in many rural areas but do not have a good lining, so it is common for water to be contaminated by infiltration of waste and other forms of contamination. These wells do not have pumps either, so women must hand draw water with greater physical and time demands.
Do you have the privilege of turning on a tap or pressing a button, and do you have drinking water in your home? If you are one of the privileged few keep these facts in mind:
A dripping tap loses 2 litres of water per hour. A constantly leaking toilet wastes 80 litres per hour. Brushing your teeth with the tap running wastes 3 litres of water, and 60 litres is wasted every time you wash the dishes.
The dishwasher / washing machine uses an average of 100 litres of water per cycle.
Washing the car with a hosepipe uses 500 litres of water and washing the pavement 250 litres.
The tap left on for half an hour wastes 570 litres, equivalent to 2,850 litres of water.
When you shower for 5 minutes you consume 95 litres of water. Equivalent to what a person drinks in 50 days (WHO data) and approximately 5 litres per minute when we turn on the shower before bathing.
A dripping tap loses 2 litres of water per hour (photo © Green Diosa)
Let’s pay more attention to certain confusing messages from some advertisements. It is a privilege to take a shower with a high water pressure but we do not need to use more than we need. Let’s make better use of this resource. Let’s take care of water, and not waste it despite the fact we think we have plenty of it.
