Produced: 2010/4/23 – The Star
Earth Day increases awareness of environmental issues and encourages individuals to take action to improve the health of the environment, while combating climate change.
In the past four decades, Earth Day has become the largest environmental event celebrated worldwide, involving 190 countries and one billion people.
In fact, Earth Day has now evolved into a worldwide, year-long campaign to protect the global environment. As announced during last year’s celebration, the theme for 2010 is The Green Generation.
Now 40 years after the first Earth Day, the world is in greater threat than ever.
There are several issues related to Earth Day and our environment, one of which is water.
Our Earth is truly unique as it contains an abundance of water. Water is essential to life. 97.5% of Earth’s water is found in the oceans; of the remaining, freshwater, only 1% is accessible for extraction and use.
As we move into the 21st century, the world is faced with water crisis, both of quantity and quality, caused by climate change, continuous population growth, industrialisation, expanding food production practices, pollution and poor water use strategies across the globe.
Globally, two million tonnes of sewage, industrial and agricultural wastes are discharged into the world’s waterways.
Water is necessary to sustaining life on Earth. Water also unites the Earth’s lands, oceans, and atmosphere into an integrated system. Precipitation, evaporation, freezing, melting and condensation are all part of the hydrological cycle — a never-ending global process of water circulation from clouds to lands, to the oceans and back to the clouds.
The water cycle is intrinsically linked with energy exchanges among the atmosphere, oceans and lands that determine the Earth’s climate and natural climate variability. The impacts of climate change and variability on the quality of human life and all living things occur primarily through the changes in the water cycle.
In Malaysia, the country’s water requirement is expected to increase by 60% to 18 billion cubic metres in 2050, as compared with 11 billion cubic metres in 2000.
As such, each of us has the duty to conserve biodiversity and protect the environment as all of these have an impact on our depleting water catchment areas and the quality and quantity of our water resources.
Sustainability is about being responsible in the management of our resources. Very often, we associate sustainable issues to oil, gas, coal and other commodities. Recent concerns on drinkable water has become the next world crisis issue.
The much talked about climate change maybe less discussed and overtaken by more urgent and pressing issues at hand such as the scarcity of water supply to meet the growing needs of the world’s population.
From the 2009 McKinsey: Charting Our Water Future report, global water demand will grow 40% from the present 4,500 billion cubic metres to 6,900 billion cubic metres by 2030. This is a global problem that will certainly impact some countries more than others.
The global water challenge includes competition for scarce water from multiple uses within a river basin, urbanisation, sustainable growth in arid and semi-arid regions, and the relationship between water and energy. Water supply also affects agricultural concerns for food, feed, fibre and bio-energy as a key demand driver for water.
According to the World Health Organisation Safe Water, Better Health report, for every US$1 spent on water and sanitation, the economic benefits an average of between US$7 and US$12. Such is the importance of water, considered the blue gold of the century, yet we tend to forget its significance in this age of climate change.
In recent years, a growing number of developed countries are already taking the eco-approach where eco-aware living is advocated by their governments and organisations.
For Malaysia, I call upon all Malaysians to come together, to embrace green living for a healthy environment and a healthy way of life. Keeping the basics in mind with our concerted actions towards reducing our carbon footprint, managing waste, observing prudence in water usage and embracing sustainability concepts in decision-making are the way forward for Malaysia.
We must all realise that living with eco-awareness will go a long way towards protecting our planet for future generations, so let us all take a pledge now before it is too late.
Earth Day should be a day that reminds us about sharing the same planet. Sharing the Earth means all of us have to take responsibility for what we use and how we use it.
Protecting Mother Earth should be every person’s and every country’s shared responsibility and in doing so, let us not forget that water is the most treasured and precious resource.
Tan Sri Rozali Ismail is the president of Water Association of Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya. He is also the executive chairman of Puncak Niaga Holdings Berhad Group.