Fresh Water Security and Climate Change

Plate 1: Fresh water body responding to climate change (Source: Internet)

A water body is said to be a fresh water if it is not marine or sea. Lake, river, pond, stream, brook, creek are world’s known fresh water reservoirs which are inalienable from man’s existence. This epitomizes one of man’s prominent dependence on nature’s resources which is continuously unending. The freshness of fresh water bodies in the past was among the alluring reasons for human’s perpetual reliance on them. Many years before anthropogenic degradations and pollution of fresh water, fresh waters are nearly safe for many uses (domestic inter alia) but at present, hardly can one vouch for a pristine water pool. Physical, chemical and biological injuries are well known traumas of fresh waters. The quality and quantity of fresh waters are threatened by numerous anthropo-natural processes. We often decry animal poaching and cry out for forest conservation, security and sustainability. In the same vein, we must not de-emphasize that of fresh water not even in the face of enigmatic climate change which scientists have affirmed with a gold standard of 95% to be caused by human activities. Climate change is an affirmed stressor of fresh water, a plucky stressor that is well-conceived and acclaimed in lectures and researches.

Plate 2: The vulnerables (Source: Internet)

Logically, a stress on fresh water purports an attendant stress on its gutless dependant. In Africa alone, climate change have been premeditated to expose 75 million to 250 million more people to increased water stress by 2020 FAO,(2011). This projection is to crave the indulgence Africans and humanity on the need to salvage and secure fresh water from climate stress and to avoid humanitarian emergencies that are likely to emerge from water stress. It has also been estimated that the number of people that will be affected by climate-related humanitarian crisis will rise by 54% to 375 million by 2015 FAO, (2011).

Plate 3:  The vulnerables (Source: Internet)

 Humanitarian effects of climate change will leave no one out, the children and women are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, the developing countries will have their tales while the developed countries have their take.  We must address the nexus between fresh water security, human prosperity and well-being in view of the changing climate. Water security for man’s existence will encompass access to sanitized clean water, as these are fundamental drivers for poverty reduction, food security, gender equality and environmental sustainability which the security of fresh water bodies promises in view of the millennium development goals.