The World Water Day celebrates water and raises awareness of the global water crisis, and a core focus of the observance is to support the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6: water and sanitation for all by 2030.

The theme of World Water Day 2021 is valuing water. The value of water is about much more than its economic value – water has enormous and complex value for our households, food, culture, health, education, economics and the integrity of our natural environment. If we overlook any of these values, we risk mismanaging this finite, irreplaceable resource. SDG 6 is to ensure water and sanitation for all. Without a comprehensive understanding of water’s true, multidimensional value, we will be unable to safeguard this critical resource for the benefit of everyone.

The 2021 World Water Development Report on “Valuing Water” assesses the current status of and challenges to the valuation of water across differing sectors and perspectives and identifies ways in which valuation can be promoted as a tool help achieve sustainability.

Water is a unique and non-substitutable resource of limited quantity. As the foundation of life, societies and economies, it carries multiple values and benefits. But unlike most other valuable resources, it has proven extremely difficult to determine its true ‘value’.

Water is our most precious resource, a ‘blue gold’ to which more than 2 billion people do not have direct access. It not only is essential to survival, but also plays a sanitary, social and cultural role at the heart of human societies.

Land restoration is a vital ally to World Water Day. As we celebrate today, let’s remember that we must value water and land equally as part of the same challenge – to build a better, more equal, healthier planet post COVID-19.

DID YOU KNOW:
#Global freshwater use has increased by a factor of six over the past 100 years and continues to grow at a rate of roughly 1% per year since the 1980s (AQUASTAT, n.d.). Much of this growth can be attributed to a combination of population growth, economic development and shifting consumption patterns.
#Agriculture currently accounts for 69% of global water withdrawals, which are mainly used for irrigation but also include water used for livestock and aquaculture. This ratio can reach up to 95% in some developing countries (FAO, 2011a).
#Globally, agriculture accounts for only about 4% of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) with an average contribution per country of 10.39%, the trend being a decreasing share of GDP (World Bank, 2020). Such figures suggest that the value added of water use in agriculture is very low.
#Globally, an estimated 80% of all industrial and municipal wastewater is released into the environment without any prior treatment, with detrimental effects on human health and ecosystems (WWAP, 2017). This ratio is much higher in least developed countries, where sanitation and wastewater treatment facilities are grossly lacking.
#About 380 billion m3 of water can be recovered from the annual volumes of wastewater produced. This type of water recovery is expected to reach 470 billion m3 by 2030 and 574 billion m3 by 2050 (Qadir et al., 2020).
#The costs of inaction, in terms of ecosystem loss and degradation, are high. As reported by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2019, p. 9), “between 1997 and 2011, the world lost an estimated US$4–20 trillion per year in ecosystem services owing to land cover change and US$6–11 trillion per year from land degradation.”
#Each year, it is estimated that approximately 829,000 people die from diarrhoea as a result of unsafe drinking water, sanitation and hand hygiene. These causes represent 60% of all deaths due to diarrhoea globally, including nearly 300,000 children under the age of five, 5.3% of all deaths in this age group (Prüss-Üstün et al., 2019).
#The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that energy (primary energy and power production) in 2014 was responsible for approximately 10% of total water withdrawals, of which about 3% was consumed (IEA, 2016). The IEA also estimates that a similar amount (about 10% of global water withdrawals) was used by the other industries.
#Projected global water demand between 2000 and 2050 shows a 400% increase for manufacturing and a 140% increase for thermal power generation (OECD, 2012). Another study (2030 WRG, 2009) foresees almost a doubling of industrial water withdrawals to 2030, reaching a percentage of 22% globally.

DID YOU KNOW: (from 2019 report)
#Water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century (FAO, 2013a). Combined with amore erratic and uncertain supply, this will aggravate the situation of currently water-stressed regions, and generate water stress in regions with currently abundant water resources.
#Water stress already affects every continent (Figure 3). Physical water scarcity is often a seasonal phenomenon, rather than a chronic one (Figure 4), and climate change is likely to cause shifts in seasonal water availability throughout the year in several places (IPCC, 2014a). About four billion people live under conditions of severe physical water scarcity for at least one month per year (Mekonnen and Hoekstra, 2016). Around 1.6 billion people, or almost a quarter of the world’s population, face economic water shortage, which means they lack the necessary infrastructure to access water (UN-Water, 2014).
#Floods and storms account for nearly 90% of the most severe natural disasters
#Around 74% of all natural disasters between 2001 and 2018 were water-related and during the past 20 years, the total number of deaths caused only by floods and droughts exceeded 166,000, while floods and droughts affected over three billion people, and caused total economic damage of almost US$700 billion (EM-DAT, 2019).3
#Droughts accounted for 5% of natural disasters, affecting 1.1 billion people, killing 22,000 more, and causing US$100 billion in damage over the 20-year period (1995–2015). Over the course of one decade, the number of floods rose from an annual average of 127 in 1995 to 171 in 2004 (CRED/UNISDR, 2015).
#The number of deaths, people affected and economic losses significantly varies annually and by continent, with Asia and Africa being the most impacted on all counts (Figures 6, 7, 8).
#Irrigation land is where the impact of elevated temperatures and aridity will be felt most. Although the current extent of this type of land (about 3,3 million km2) accounts for only 2.5% of the total land area, it does represent 20% of cultivated land and generates some 40% of the global agricultural output (FAOSTAT, n.d.).