The UN and Unesco warn of the coming shortage of blue gold, often neglected and wasted. The pandemic is increasing inequalities between rich and poor countries.
Posted today at 07:00—
–About 830,000 people die of diarrhea each year due to lack of safe drinking water, sanitation and hand hygiene.
BSIP via AFP
How do you quantify the amount of 443 million school days lost each year due to water-related illnesses? What can be done to shorten the thirty minutes imposed on hundreds of millions of women and children around the world to collect water and which expose them to the risk of assault and rape? How to stop the spread of Covid-19 if billions of people cannot wash their hands?
These questions and many others are raised by the UN report published Monday by Unesco on the occasion of World Water Day. They refer rich countries to the true value of water, too often regarded as an obvious and inexhaustible good. “We are not paying the right price for our supply and sanitation services,” said Richard Connor, co-author of the report. Few of us know, for example, that treating our wastewater costs five times more than treating the clean water that enters our homes. ”
