World Water Day: Expert tips on how to do your part for the planet

As the UN Water Conference kicks off in New York City, here's how you can help conserve H2O in everyday life

The celebration of World Water Day coincides with the start of the UN Water Conference in New York, aimed at solving the water and sanitation crisis. AP Photo

David Hannah remembers a childhood spent exploring the outdoors, paddling in streams, playing in the rain, climbing trees and going to the beach.

But it was when he moved from the UK to the US in the 1980s that he developed a deep fascination with geography thanks to the diverse people, landscapes, places and environments he experienced.

Hannah's interest in nature spurred his choice of career — he is currently a hydrology professor and the Unesco chair in Water Science at the University of Birmingham in the UK, as well as the director of the Birmingham Institute for Sustainability and Climate Action.

Wednesday marks World Water Day, as well as the start of the UN Water Conference in New York City, the first high-level global water conference to take place since 1977.

According to Unicef, four billion people currently experience severe water scarcity for at least one month each year. Meanwhile, more than two billion people live in countries where water supply is inadequate. It is estimated that about 700 million people could be displaced because of intense water scarcity by 2030.

In order to accelerate efforts towards meeting water-related challenges, the UN General Assembly declared 2018 to 2028 as the international decade for water action, meaning the UN Water Conference is its five-year midpoint review.

The three-day event, co-hosted by the Netherlands and Tajikistan, is expected to cover water-related issues such as drought and flooding, as well as seek solutions towards sanitisation and clean, accessible water for all.

While Hannah has spent the majority of his life studying water, he was first alerted to global water issues when he was young. He recalls growing up in Southern California and one day opening a telephone directory and reading about water-saving tips as part of emergency plans for water scarcity.

“Despite this water-saving advice, there was no action as people still watered their laws with sprinklers at midday in this desert-like environment,” he says. “I realised there was a problem with how people valued water and that we needed to change behaviours to conserve finite water resources."

How people can do their part for the water crisis

Hannah offers some suggestions on how people can help do their part at home.

• Save water with shower timers, turn off taps when brushing your teeth and washing dishes
• Eat locally and seasonally, and choose products made with less water
• Talk openly about the critical connection between water and sanitation
• Protect nature and use it to store water, plant a tree or make a rain garden at home
• Do not put plastics, oil, medicines, chemicals and other pollutants down the drain
• Join or initiate drives to clean up your local water areas such as rivers, wetlands and ponds

Awareness and action

Although it has taken several decades for the UN to host a conference specifically about the water crisis, Hannah hopes it will bring some much-needed awareness on the issue.

“I hope it is a watershed moment for water — notably UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, which aims to ensure the sustainable management of water and sanitation for all,” says Hannah.

And while it may feel like a big topic to tackle, Hannah hopes the conference could result in something similar to the Paris Agreement, which was a legally binding international treaty on climate change signed at Cop21 in France in 2015.

“A key outcome should be the Water Action Agenda, which I hope has change-making commitments for stakeholders including government, industry, NGOs and civil society,” he says. “We need this to accelerate progress towards the UN SDG 2030 Agenda. We need to turn talk into action.”

However, it isn't just entities and governments that need to pay attention. He says that one of the biggest misconceptions is that people are not part of the problem.

“We cannot tackle the water crisis without understanding the fundamentals of water science, and how people and water interact,” he says. “We need to reconceptualise the way in which we think about hydrological systems by showing they cannot be viewed purely in the context of natural processes. Humans are very much embedded in, and modify, the hydrological cycle in both positive and negative ways.”

He also points out that water cycle diagrams used for global education can often be out of date and offer a false sense of security because they are not updated to reflect the current situation. Basic diagrams tend to show the cycle of water from evaporation, condensation, precipitation and collection, but leave out how things such as human consumption, climate change and land use can have an impact.

He cites a study that he conducted that analysed 450 diagrams in textbooks and online and found that 85 per cent of them showed no human interaction with the water cycle while only 2 per cent even connected it to climate change or water pollution.

“Pictures of the Earth's water cycle used in education and research throughout the world are in urgent need of updating to show the effects of human interference,” he says. “Leaving humans out of the picture contributes to a basic lack of awareness of how humans relate to water on Earth and a false sense of security about future availability of this essential and scarce resource.”

Although he’s been advocating on water awareness for a long time, regardless of the outcome at the UN Water Conference, Hannah urges people to not give up.

“Our biggest future challenge will be water security: too much, too little, too polluted, too inaccessible. You can make a personal commitment to solve the water and sanitation crisis — take water action now. Everyone has a part to play."