by Matthias Saladin, Skat / RWSN Secretariat
Today is World Water Day, but to be honest, this does not mean much to me. Not that I don’t care about water (who doesn’t?) or about the people who cannot just turn on the tap in the morning for their shower, but somehow 22nd March for me is just a day like many others in the year.
A few months ago, many media channels hailed the finding of what are believed to be indications for water on Mars. Whereas this indeed may be an important finding, it also shows how much we all focus our attention on such events: finding water on Mars, inventing the next machine which will solve all the problems of the world (and on the way turning wastewater to drinking water and energy), busily drilling new boreholes and constructing new water supply distribution networks – while not caring about the millions of boreholes drilled and thousands of water supply systems constructed in the past decades which do not function any longer (and all the inventions which somehow did not solve the problem so far). And with some 660 million people without access to improved sources of drinking water on our planet one might indeed ask why finding water – or traces of it – on a different plant would make a difference to our lives.
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