Water is perhaps the most vital natural resource on the planet. It is necessary for human survival and a critical input into our food, manufacturing, and energy systems. It also sustains the ecosystems and climates upon which both our built and natural world rely.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6 is focused on water, with several sub-goals related to different water challenges. More efficient use and management of water are critical to addressing the growing demand for water, threats to water security and the increasing frequency and severity of droughts and floods resulting from climate change. Underlying all the world’s water challenges are the looming repercussions of our changing global climate. Climate change introduces a huge amount of uncertainty to water supply reliability in the future.
Every two years the World Health Organization takes a look at access to improved drinking water around the world. The good news is that an additional 2 billion people gained access to improved water between 1990 and 2010, including 273 million in Sub Saharan Africa. The bad news is that some 780 million people have seen no improvement to their water supplies. While there was progress in most regions of the world, Sub Saharan Africa lagged behind. This is particularly true in rural areas where almost 20 percent of the people still use surface water—rivers, lakes, ponds, and irrigation channels—for drinking and cooking.
The absence of clean water affects everyone, but children suffer the most. Contaminated water leads to water-borne disease and death, particularly for children under the age of five. Older children often can’t attend school because they are burdened with collecting water from sources far from their homes.
In line with this, African Foundation for Climate Change and Sustainable Development (AFCCSD) seeks to deal with potable water supply – a priority for all those in the rural communities, which is increasingly threatened with drought. Our project focuses on solar powered boreholes which has a concrete objective and long term impacts for the community of the project beneficiary, as they get access to potable solar powered drinking water. Click the link below to see our project proposal. Project proposal for solar powered borehole.
