Water Industry News

WaterAid Art Highlights Climate Change Threat To Water Supplies

Charity WaterAid has created a giant piece of art on the sands at Whitby Beach to highlight the impact that climate change is already having on water supplies around the world, and that this is only going to become a more acute issue as time goes on.

 

The artwork is a portrait of a child carrying water and it was created on dry, cracked ground next to the rising tide. Artists from Sand in your Eyes spent four hours creating the striking piece of work.

 

The portrait is of 12-year-old Ansha, who lives in Frat, Ethiopia, and who spends hours each day collecting water from a dirty river. Just one hour after the portrait was completed, it was washed away by the incoming tide.

 

As the charity explained, this was designed to show the impact that excess rainfall and rising sea levels has on the planet, resulting in flooding and contamination of water supplies for millions around the world.

 

Nadiya Hussain, MBE, WaterAid ambassador, author and TV chef, commented: “It’s a terrible injustice that millions of children’s lives are threatened because of a lack of clean water, and that climate change is making the situation even harder for those in the world’s poorest places who have done the least to cause it.”

 

Chief executive for WaterAid Tim Wainwright called on the British government to take the lead to ensure “sufficient resources are put into making sure that everyone everywhere has clean water, now and forever”.

 

The charity recently released its report Turn the tide: the state of the world’s water in 2021, which revealed that while 5.3 billion people around the world have access to a safe water supply in their homes, some 2.2 billion people still don’t have their own tap or pump that provides a reliable water supply.

 

206 million people have to travel more than 30 minutes to access water from a source that is designed to make it safe to drink (such as a covered well or borehole), while 435 million people are still using water from an unprotected spring or dug well.

 

WaterAid makes a number of recommendations about what needs to happen to start tackling these issues, including high-income countries increasing the level of financial support they provide to help those in the poorest communities to mitigate and tackle the threat of climate change.

 

The charity also pointed out that on both a national and a local level, there should be climate plans in place that include climate-resilience planning for different regions. The threats to water supplies should be prioritised by governments in low to middle income countries as part of their climate action plans as well.

 

As a business, it’s important that you understand your water usage so that you can optimise it and ensure you’re not wasting this valuable resource. As well as saving you money on your water bills, it also means you are doing your part to ensure that there is a sustainable water supply for the future.

 

If you want to compare business water suppliers to find the one that is not only the most cost-effective for your business but that is also doing its bit to help mitigate the effects of climate change on our water supply, get in touch with the SwitchWaterSupplier.com team today.