Mar
22
Week 5: It’s WORLD WATER DAY today!
March 22, 2008 | | 2 Comments
Elmy Lung
22nd March 2008- So, Ma Ying- Jeou, Nationalist party presidential candidate won by a large margin at the Taiwan Presidential Elections today. Just check any news website’s frontpage and this is what’s dominating international news at the moment.
But any of you even realize that something more international, something that’s more worthy of celebrating and acknowledging is actually the WORLD WATER DAY today?
The World Water Day, started back in 1993 as a result of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro.
Some central themes of this day, cited from the office website: Worldwaterday.org, is that,
“The United Nations General Assembly designated 22 March of each year as the World Day for Water by adopting a resolution…in conformity with the recommendations of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development contained in chapter 18 (Fresh Water Resources) of Agenda 21.
States were invited to devote the Day to implement the UN recommendations and set up concrete activities as deemed appropriate in the national context.
The Subcommittee welcomes the assistance offered by IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre to contribute to an information network centre in support of the observance of the Day by Governments, as required.”
But government actions seem to be lacking. Consensus building on sharing water facilities have thus proven to be hard to reach. Citizens of different regions aren’t even aware of this day or what it entails.
Even though I’m writing about the global water crisis, I did not come across this piece of information until two days ago- when I happened to come across a video about a British TV presenter doing promotions for washing powder Ariel. The campaign is called “Save Water with Ariel”, shower timers will be given out and it’s all about asking people to take three minute showers instead of a national average (in the U.K) of over seven minutes (for men and women). While the information was relevant, remind people of our vital resources and suggest a money saving action, it all seemed to be too much of a PR gimmick.
But I suppose if it is a way messages can get across in the capitalist world, then perhaps any publicity that will shed light on the issue would be good. I can’t help but wonder if we will ever wake up and realize the severity of the problem, to look at it not through economic means but through security means, be awaken to the fact that human security cannot be sacraficed- something as simple as the right to have access to safe and clean water.
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Nice one Elmy—Shows how little attention the media play to the issues that really matter.
[...] my last post I wrote about how the “World Water Day” was mentioned because Ariel was using it in a [...]