Safe water for our future

We all need enough potable water for hydration, nourishmentand hygiene. Having safeand sufficient access to potablewater, as well as ensuring its later purification, are basic human rights. Water quality and its sanitary conditions have a major impact on individual and social health. Unfortunately, water is a finite resource on our planet and proper management is essential to ensure future availability.

Water is an essential pillar of the environment: it's the direct habitat for millions of species and is the essential resource for many natural settings with certain ecological value. If water supplies disappear, decline or degrade, species that are of importance for life cycles will likewise disappear, thus affecting the natural equilibrium. A responsible society should not exhaust all natural water, but return it under the proper conditions to nature in order to leave behind a proper legacy for future generations.

By 2030, 75% of the world's population will live in large cities and near the coast. Independent of climate cycles and without exhausting natural water resources, the only way of ensuring safe water is to complement water resources with more reutilization of freshwater and desalination of seawater. New technologies already enable wastewater reuse and seawater desalination at costs comparable to conventional resources, which are increasing located further away, deeper and more polluted

There are more than 7 billion people on this planet with rising food, energy and mineral resource needs. Water is necessary for agriculture and to produce other foods. The limit on food production is not due to a lack of soil or technology, but to a lack of water. Water is needed in many energy production processes and to obtain and process many minerals. Therefore, with each passing day it is increasingly vital to analyze and manage the interrelationships between water and other natural resources.

Water is the cause of political and military conflicts between countries. Droughts cause thousands of deaths and trigger famines that devastate some regions of the world, leading to migrations that affect relations of neighboring countries. Many countries that do not treat their wastewater dump it into bordering rivers, where it reaches other countries and is used again as a supply source. Therefore, a reasonable ecological value must be ensured. Proper management of water and its conservation in all cases must not be a reason for conflict, but a motivation for a peaceful coexistence.