Celebrate World Water Day

The United Nation's World Water Day is celebrated annually on March 22nd as a means of focusing attention on the importance of freshwater. This is a day of advocacy for the sustainable management of freshwater resources around the globe.

The theme for World Water Day 2011 is Water for cities: responding to the urban challenge. This year's campaign aims to spotlight and encourage governments, organizations, communities, and individuals to actively engage in addressing the issues associated with urban water management. The objective is to focus international attention on the impact of urban population growth, industrialization and the uncertainties caused by climate change. World Water Day also focuses attention on the impacts of conflicts and natural disasters on urban water systems.  

Key issues discussed on this day include:

The growing urban water and sanitation demand
Increased pollution from municipal and industrial discharges
Climate change and its unforeseen risks and challenges
Overexploitation of available water resources
Better targeting of assistance for the urban poor
The critical role of local governments and other service providers in tackling these challenges

To help draw attention to this day, the UN's World Water Day website is reinforced by social media channels like Facebook and Twitter. Through these vehicles, the website is disseminating messages and engaging people (schools, civil society, and NGOs) in activities and events.

Here is a list of U.N. resources to help celebrate World Water Day:

World Water Day official website
Events Map for World Water Day
Campaign Materials Downloads
Facebook page
TWITTER account
YouTube
Flickr photostream.
World Water Day Advocacy Guide (2.4Mb PDF)
Water and Disasters 21.03.2011 (PDF)
Workshop on International Water Quality Standards/Guidelines for Ecosystems (PDF)
Workshop on UN‐Water Mapping Exercise on Water Quality 21.03.2011 (PDF)

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

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