Tea pickers collect water from the nearby "chora", or lake in the Kewachora tea garden, Sylhet, Bangladesh. The women use the dirty water to cook, clean and drink. GMB Akash/Panos/WaterAid

When collecting water, some women in Koyra, Bangladesh have had to walk across an area of barren ground that has been contaminated with saline after cyclone Aila GMB Akash/Panos/WaterAid

A young boy washes himself at a hand pump in Tamil Nadu, India. The water is too salty for drinking and is only used for bathing and cleaning purposes. Dieter Telemans/WaterAid

Every two weeks during high tide these slums in Madagascar are flooded, pushing up waste and rubbish and contaminating water supplies. Anna Kari/WaterAid

Local people operate a water kiosk in Miandrivizo, Madagascar. If international targets on water and sanitation are met, the economic benefit to the world would be $60bn. Anna Kari/WaterAid

At the start of the dry season, villagers from Ourare Alaye Tem in northern Mali are forced to make a four-day trek into neighbouring Burkina Faso in search of water. Layton Thompson/WaterAid

Villagers in Bokola, Malawi celebrate as their community hits fresh water. Malawi is one of the only countries in Sub-Saharan Africa currently on track to reach its water. Jason Larkin/WaterAid

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

World Water Day

• World Water Day is held annually as a means of focusing attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources.

• World Water Day (March 22nd) was created at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) and a way to internationally recognize and celebrate the world’s freshwater.

• In December 2010, the United Nations General Assembly declared 2013 as the United Nations International Year of Water Cooperation.

• The Great Lakes contain 20% of the world’s freshwater resources but they are finite - they’re the remnants of a glacial deposit from the last ice age. Only 1% of the water is a renewable resource (i.e. replaced by precipitation and runoff) yet the International Joint Commission is suggesting that a 5.8% increase in Lake Huron outflow to the St. Clair River is acceptable and something we should “adapt to”.

• This is wrong as the outflow is a significant contributing factor to the unprecedented low water levels we are witnessing on Lakes Michigan Huron and in Georgian Bay.

2013 International Year of Water Cooperation

• In designating 2013 as the UN International Year of Water Cooperation, the UNGA recognizes that cooperation is essential to strike a balance between the different needs and priorities and share this precious resource equitably.

• Good management of water is especially challenging due to its unique characteristic and the complexity of the hydrological cycle. Small changes can produce a multiplicity of unintended impacts and the St. Clair River is a perfect example. Human actions including dredging, sand and gravel mining and hardened shorelines have drastically altered the St. Clair River led to erosion of exposed sediments. [Note: There is an (uncompleted) outstanding agreement between Canada and the U.S. that requires placement of compensating submersible sills as a condition of the 1962 Seaway dredging]

• Lakes Michigan and Huron have hovered close to record low levels for 14 years and just recently set a new record low. These large bodies of water remain 27 inches below their long term average (while Lakes Erie and Ontario - under a similar climate -- are close to their long term averages).

• Rapid urbanization, pollution and climate change threaten the Great Lakes resources while demands for water are increasing in order to satisfy food production, energy, industrial and domestic needs.

Why Water Cooperation?

• The Great Lakes cross political boundaries and international cooperation is necessary to manage the resource to ensure different (and sometimes conflicting/competing) needs are met, and claims and cultures are respected.

• If stakeholders involved in water management -- including the International Joint Commission -- do not cooperate, the ‘cooperation chain’ is broken and water resources will not be managed in the most efficient and effective way, with adverse effects on human lives and the economy.

• Lakes Michigan/Huron/Georgian Bay water levels can be restored gradually and responsibly with minimal 2-3 inch temporary downstream impact. Canada and the United States have an outstanding agreement (since 1962) that compensation sills would be installed in the St. Clair River as a condition of Seaway navigation dredging to maintain water levels. It is high time the terms of that agreement were finally met.

• When water resources are cooperatively shared and managed, peace, prosperity and sustainable development are much more likely to be achieved.

What is ActionH20?
ActionH2O seeks to harness a grassroots collective effort to develop new conservation and efficiency-based approaches to water management that are adopted by local governments. This bottom-up effort has HUGE potential to change how water is managed across the whole country! The goal of ActionH2O is to work with 20 cities and towns across Canada over the next 1½ years to identify locally relevant solutions and opportunities for action on water conservation. Using “How To” handbooks and primers, cutting-edge research, a Water Sustainability Charter Toolkit, and a unique visual-based resource that outlines the full application of best water practices called "Canada’s Bluest City", and the ingenuity of grassroots groups across the country, ActionH2O will bring a comprehensive suite of water conservation planning and action resources to the doors of Canadian communities.

Source: Sierra Club Canada

Al Jazeera: World Water Day marked with 'toilet campaign'

United Nations launches campaign to lift deadly taboo on talking about toilets and "open defecation" in poor nations.

Facts from Wateraid.org • Around 2,000 children die every day from diseases caused by dirty water and poor sanitation. • 783 million people in the world live without safe water, roughly one in ten of the world's population. • 2.5 billion people live without sanitation; this is 39 percent of the world's population. • More than two billion people have gained access to improved drinking water since 1990. • 37 precent of the world’s population still lack access to sanitation and by 2015 that will be 33 percent. Sub-Saharan Africa on current trends is not likely to have universal access to sanitation for another 350 years (2360).

The United Nations has launched a campaign to lift a deadly taboo on talking about toilets and to turn the world into an "open defecation-free zone".

The move is part of activities to mark the World Water Day.

The initiative aims to cut the 3,000 children under five who die each day from water-borne diseases like cholera, dysentry and diarrhea, and the 2.5 billion people without access to a toilet.

"Here is a silent disaster which needs to have attention," UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, a pioneer in unsanitised talk about toilets, said on Friday.

"There is an element of taboo around toilets and open defecation," Eliasson, who recalled a speech to the UN General Assembly in 2010, said.

"There was a little bit of 'hmmm hmmm' murmuring in the hall. I finished the speech with the word 'toilet.' It was not very common in the UN. The words which I will speak more and more often now is: 'open defecation.'"

'Fact of life'

Facts from WaterAid.org:

• Around 2,000 children die every day from diseases caused by dirty water and poor sanitation.
• 783 million people in the world live without safe water, roughly one in ten of the world's population.
• 2.5 billion people live without sanitation; this is 39 percent of the world's population.
• More than two billion people have gained access to improved drinking water since 1990.
• 37 precent of the world’s population still lack access to sanitation and by 2015 that will be 33 percent. Sub-Saharan Africa on current trends is not likely to have universal access to sanitation for another 350 years (2360).

The practice is "a fact of life" for the hundreds of millions of chronically poor people who have to go to toilet in the open air.

Can you imagine the lack of dignity around this act, the risk of being raped if you are a woman or a girl going out at night, but also the health risk for personal health and the environment?" the UN official asked.

Cutting by half the number of people with no access to fresh water by 2015 was one of the eight Millennium Development Goals on health and poverty set in 2000.

It is the target that is most off course. At the current pace, the water target may be reached by 2075.

"We have an uphill battle, it is lagging so seriously," Eliasson, a former Swedish foreign minister, told reporters.

Kate Norgrove, of the WaterAid group, told of how she was a teacher in a Nepal village where the school's single toilet was "a little broken down shack that sat directly above the school playground in full visibility of everyone".

Girls gradually dropped out as they reached the age when they would start to menstruate, she said.

"So that's the taboo we want to break. It is a real problem and it is a real problem for those in that 2.5 billion category," said Eliasson.

Hungary's UN Ambassador Csaba Korosi, a leading UN campaigner on improving sanitation, said 65 percent of the world's population will live in or around cities by 2020 and health problems will pile up if no action is taken.

It will be "a huge challenge for human dignity," he said.