This year's World Water Day's theme 'Nature for Water' looks apparently simple. But often the simplest thing in the world proves to be the most difficult task to accomplish. Here the emphasis is on a return to Nature for a solution to the water crisis facing people the world over. As many as 2.1 billion people on Earth have no access to safe water at home. Only one per cent of the total earth water is usable and 97 per cent is salty water and the rest two per cent remains in the form of ice. So, even though about 71 per cent of the Earth is covered by water, the quantity of water usable is limited and still less is that of the drinking water. According to the United Nations, the world population in the last 40 years has doubled and the use of water has quadrupled. This is a clear indication of a critical situation the global population is heading for on account of water.
Another estimate shows that 46 per cent of the Earth's surface is covered by trans-boundary river basins and this can be a potential reason for wars between nations and communities within a country. No wonder that some social scientists and experts from other disciplines are of the view that if there ever takes place a third world war, it will most likely be over water. Apart from the Colorado water dispute between Mexico and the United States of America, the on-going legal battle involving Georgia, Alabama and Florida gives an indication of how the problem vitiates socio-political atmosphere between nations and within a national boundary. Problem in sharing waters of common rivers between Bangladesh and India is also a case in point. But then Maharashtra, Andhra, Karnataka, Odisha, Gujrat are locked in one or other form of inter-state water dispute over sharing of water of the rivers of Krishna, Cauveri, Godavari and Narmada.
Even if world and national leaders demonstrate as much sagacity as is required to avoid bloody conflicts, there are other threats posed by unwise use of water and pollution allowed to bedevil the available sources of water. In the underdeveloped countries, this problem is acuter. Bangladesh may soon officially graduate from its least developed country (LDC) status, but its management of rivers is too poor. The four rivers running round the capital city bears a striking testimony to this fact. So polluted are the river waters that they are not even treatable by advanced technology. Rivers all across the country are hardly in a healthy shape.
On other fronts of water use also, Bangladesh's record is very poor. In Barind area, water bodies have dried up and ground water has declined to unprecedented level causing irrigation to suffer. On the same token, the capital city's water table has been going down by one to one and a half metres each year. Experts have set the alarm bell ringing that extraction of underground water by the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) will make the city vulnerable many times over to a moderate to severe earthquake. Such problems could still be overcome if pollution of river waters were contained, flood plains and water bodies and water retention areas recovered from illegal occupation. This is how a nation and global people can turn to Nature for a solution to water crisis.