By Bisola Adeyemo
Water is a basic nutrient of the human body and critical to human life. It supports the digestion of food, absorption, transportation, and use of nutrients, and the elimination of toxins and wastes from the body.
Water is also essential for the preparation of food stuff.
In most developing countries, particularly in Nigeria poor access to potable water is a common problem.
Indeed many lives are lost annually to water-borne diseases arising from unmitigated poor access to safe drinking water.
An estimated 100 million Nigerians still lack basic sanitation facilities and 63 million do not have access to improved sources of drinking water. In rural areas, only about 42% of households have access to safe water.
Streams and wetlands provide many benefits to communities by trapping floodwaters, recharging groundwater supplies, filtering pollution, and providing habitat for fish and wildlife.
According to World Health Organization (WHO), million people lack even a basic drinking-water service, including 144 million people who are dependent on surface water.
Globally, at least 2 billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with faeces. Contaminated water can transmit diseases such diarrhoea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, and polio. Contaminated drinking water is estimated to cause 485 000 diarrhoeal deaths each year.
Poor access to improved water and sanitation in Nigeria remains a major contributing factor to high morbidity and mortality rates among children. The use of contaminated drinking water and poor sanitary conditions result in increased vulnerability to water-borne diseases, including diarrhea which leads to deaths of more than 70,000 children under five annually.
Common challenges to clean water is climate change, which causes more severe droughts and floods, and Increasing global temperatures. It also increases water scarcity.
Climate change impacts the water cycle by influencing when, where, and how much precipitation falls. It also leads to more severe weather events over time. Increasing global temperatures causes water to evaporate in larger amounts.
The way forward is to improve the access to potable water in Nigeria which may include the protection of water sources and control of water treatment.
Also, disposed items that cannot be recycled should be prevented from making their way to rivers and oceans.
Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6 by 2030 requires extraordinary efforts.
Governments can secure the long-term sustainability of freshwater resources use by Setting maximum sustainable limits for water consumption and water pollution in river basins and aquifers to ensure the appropriate balance between water, people and nature as well as ensure sustainability of water services in rural communities.