The UNESCO Chair In Water Science group is now looking to advance innovative and sustainable solutions to the water crisis, in response to estimations that around 80 per cent of the global population now lives in areas with high water security threats, with billions affected by challenges such as water scarcity, poor quality, hydrological disasters and lack of sanitation facilities.
The aim of the Chair in Water Science organisation, set up by the University of Birmingham in 2017, is to come up with a transformative approach to tackle wicked water problems, problems that are incredibly difficult to solve because of a lack of data and evolving human needs.
Research is currently focused on areas such as making use of the knowledge of local people (citizen scientists) and the use of cost-efficient sensing technologies for water monitoring, both of which have the potential to further advance the understanding of water science.
This will improve sustainable management of water resources and ecosystem services to better the environment and people’s livelihoods.
In a statement, Birmingham University said: “The covid-19 pandemic is a wake-up call for water security. We are all aware acutely of the crucial need for access to safe water for handwashing to reduce transmission risks of communicable diseases.
“Access to safe water is a basic human right that is not being met for large sections of the world’s population. Urgent action and global collaboration on water security is essential to better prepare societies for the future – including global health crises.”
Although our planet is 70 per cent covered by water, just three per cent of this is fresh. And of this, around 70 per cent is snow or ice, or otherwise unavailable for us to use. The freshwater that is available isn’t distributed equality around the world, so billions of people experience severe water scarcity for at least one month out of the year.
As such, it’s essential that we all do our best to reduce our own individual water footprints, in a bid to safeguard this precious resource for future generations – especially given the climate emergency and the fact that we are likely to see more extreme weather events in the future, which will also have an impact on the amount of water available.
As a business, the good news is that there’s a lot you can do right now to make a very real difference where water supplies are concerned. This could be anything from monitoring water flow to investing in rainwater harvesting systems.
