APPEAL OF THE DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENT FOR WORLD WATER DAY, MARCH 22, 2018
2018 Theme: Nature for Water
World Water Day is celebrated on 22nd March 2018. The theme for World Water Day 2018 is “Nature for Water”. This year’s theme explores how we can use nature to overcome the water challenges of the 21st century. Water is an essential building block of life. It is more than just essential to quench thirst or protect health; water is vital for creating jobs and supporting economic, social, and human development. Today, there are over 663 million people living without a safe water supply close to home, spending countless hours queuing or trekking to distant sources, and coping with the health impacts of using contaminated water.
Environmental damage, together with climate change, is driving the water-related crises around the world, as we see. Floods, drought and water pollution are all made worse by degraded vegetation, soil, rivers and lakes. When we neglect our ecosystems, we make it harder to provide everyone with the water we need to survive and thrive. Nature-based solutions have the potential to solve many of our water challenges. We need to do so much more with ‘green’ infrastructure and harmonize it with ‘grey’ infrastructure wherever possible. Planting new forests, reconnecting rivers to floodplains, and restoring wetlands will rebalance the water cycle and improve human health and livelihoods. Sustainable Development Goal 6 ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all by 2030 which includes a target to halve the proportion of untreated wastewater and increase water recycling and safe reuse.
World water day is celebrated throughout the world to creating the awareness among the public towards the importance of water in various field of life including the environment, health, agriculture and trade. The water day 2018 may be celebrated by organizing variety of events and activities such as visual art, theatrical and musical celebrations of water, excursions to the local ponds, lakes, rivers and reservoirs, symposium at local, national and international level over water management and safety, distributing messages through TV and radio channels or internet, educational events based on the importance of clean water and conservative measures, competitions and so many activities. The main symbol of the World Water Day celebration is the shape of water drop of blue color.
On this day, I urge ever one to take responsibility for creating awareness about the importance of water and its conservation among the people and school children for Nature-based Solutions for Water delicacy in future. We can use nature to overcome the water challenges of the century.
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