World Water Day – 22 March
World Water Day, observed annually on March 22 since 1993, is a significant United Nations event that highlights the critical importance of fresh water. This day not only celebrates water but also raises awareness about the 2.2 billion individuals who lack access to safe water — more than a million in Canada alone! It serves as a call to action, urging us to address the global water crisis head-on.
Each year, UN-Water (the UN’s coordination mechanism on water and sanitation) formulates a theme for World Water Day – for 2025 it’s “Save Our Glaciers”, worth an informative read.
At NWPA, we want to shine a spotlight on an invaluable resource right in our backyard: our aquifer, commonly referred to as groundwater. Groundwater accounts for approximately 30% of the world’s fresh water supply. In contrast, nearly 69% of the remaining fresh water is stored in ice caps and glaciers, leaving a mere 1% available in rivers and lakes. This highlights just how crucial groundwater is to our planet’s water resources.
The image below from March of this year is an example of only one of many actual mismanagements of the limited fresh aquifer water that takes place in our area. What you see before you are millions of litres of precious finite freshwater, a vital resource for thousands of residents, being irresponsibly extracted from the ground aquifer and wastefully discarded and discharged into an open drain, exposing it to adverse contamination! Why? This primarily serves the interests of industrial operations that underestimate the crucial importance of fresh water and its fundamental value to all life.
This is, by definition, legal, and this source is permitted (by the Province of Ontario) – to extract 25,458,000 litres of water per day! That’s the average amount of fresh water required for a population five times the size of Port Colborne!
Access to clean water is a Human Right and even in such a ‘progressive’ country as Canada, more than 1,000,000 people do not have access to clean drinking water every day. The community of Neskantaga First Nation (n northern Ontario – the province with the most fresh water in Canada) has been under a “boil water advisory” for more than 30 years! The UN is urging Canada to recognize the human right to water in its legal system, and the NWPA is collaborating with various individuals and organizations to achieve this goal.
Throughout the month of March and beyond, join us on a journey to protect our limited fresh water supply. Each one of our individual actions to protect our water makes a difference, and working together makes our protection stronger. Water is fundamental to all life, and it is crucial that we recognize its value and effectively manage our finite freshwater resources. Doing so will guarantee a sustainable future that nurtures and supports all living beings.
We would like to continue and deepen our connections with you, our incredible supporters, through our shared water advocacy work. Please feel free to use World Water Month as an excuse to share our collective work across your networks!
Read more about the UN declaration of water & sanitation as Human Rights.
