Groundwater – making the invisible visible

World Water Day, celebrated on March 22 every year, is about focusing attention on the importance of water.
This year’s theme, “Groundwater – making the invisible visible” explores groundwater solutions to the water challenges we face in the 21st century.
The United Nations has warned that environmental damage, together with climate change, is driving the water-related crises we see around the world. 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 clean water we need to survive and thrive.
Nature-based solutions have the potential to solve many of the planet’s existing water challenges. However, more needs to be done with ‘green’ infrastructure to harmonise 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.
According to a UN report on the state of the world’s water, more than five billion people could suffer water shortages by 2050 due to climate change, increased demand, and polluted supplies. The comprehensive study warns of conflict and civilisational threats unless actions are taken to reduce the stress on rivers, lakes, aquifers, wetlands, and reservoirs.
In his message for World Water Day 2022, Housing and Water Minister Collin Croal outlined Government’s objectives and targets towards achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goal Number Six: water and sanitation for all by 2030.
To achieve this goal, he said Government intended to increase access to potable water from 96 per cent to 100 per cent by 2025; increase treated water coverage from 52 per cent to 90 per cent on the Coast, and increase access to potable water supply from 60 per cent to 100 per cent for hinterland and riverine communities by 2024.
To quote the Minister: “The achievement of these goals requires massive fiscal investments and consequently, more than $21 billion have been committed through budgetary allocations for the period 2020 to 2022 for water and sanitation. Notwithstanding, we must also address the need for exploration, monitoring and analysis of our groundwater resources so that we can better protect and manage them. We can only do this if we commit to using water sustainably. We must ensure that our water sources are protected from contamination and wastage.”
One of the UN’s World Water Development Reports stated that positive change is possible, particularly in the key agricultural sector, but only if there is a move towards nature-based solutions that rely more on soil and trees than steel and concrete.
Humans use about 4600 cubic km of water every year, of which 70 per cent goes to agriculture, 20 per cent to industry and 10 per cent to households, the report had stated, and global demand has increased sixfold over the past 100 years and continues to grow at the rate of one per cent each year.
This is already creating strains that will grow by 2050, when the world population is forecast to reach between 9.4 billion and 10.2 billion, with two in every three people living in cities.
By 2050, the report predicts, between 4.8 billion and 5.7 billion people will live in areas that are water-scarce for at least one month each year, while the number of people at risk of floods will increase to 1.6 billion, from 1.2 billion. Demand for water is projected to rise fastest in developing countries, like Guyana. Meanwhile, climate change will put an added stress on supplies, because it will make wet regions wetter and dry regions drier.
We join with Minister Croal on this World Water Day as he said in his message “let us commit to protecting the access we have to clean water by practising sustainable ways to use it, improving our sanitation habits and ensuring hygiene behaviour change and reducing pressure on our water resources. Let us intensify the cooperation and collaboration among all stakeholders to ensure that this life-saving resource is never in crisis”.