UN ‘World Water Day’ Report “Water shortages outnumber natural disasters such as floods”

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On the 23rd (local time), the second day of the water-related conference being held at the UN Headquarters on World Water Day, UN experts released another report, addressing the world’s drinking water shortages and water shortages for basic sanitation facilities. warned about

According to the ‘UN Expert Report’ released on the same day, nearly three-fourths of the world’s 7.78 billion people suffer from water shortages, and they score below 65 out of 100 of the 10 water-related indicators.

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Of these, about 610 million (8%) were found to have critical water shortages, the report said.

Of the water-risk population, 4.31 billion are from the Asia-Pacific region, 1.34 billion from Africa, 415 million from the Americas, and 66 million from Europe.

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Through this report, UN expert Khabe Madani, who made a presentation on the second day of the UN Water Day conference, emphasized that “to realize all of the UN’s development goals, we must first discuss the water problem and the seriousness of the water crisis.”

Madani is director of the UN University, a global think tank, and is a UN-trained water management expert focused on water management projects in Iran.

Madani told reporters at UN Headquarters, “The survey statistics in this report are shocking and alarming, but it is fortunate that they were released sooner rather than later while there was still time.”

Experts writing this report say that even in this era of global warming, far more people around the world die from a lack of drinking water or basic water demand services than from natural disasters such as floods and droughts.

Dr. Charlotte McAllister, an expert on water-related training in the UK, also part of the United Nations University Laboratory, said, “There are far more deaths from water shortages than from climate change catastrophes.” More and more people are dying because of lack of sanitation,” he said.

Among the reports released during this UN Water Day event, there is still no comprehensive solution to the water problem. However, the report on the 23rd said that now is not the time to despair, and that “significant progress on water issues is possible in the coming years.”

In particular, countries that lack some water-related infrastructure can make great strides by expanding national water management and sanitation management infrastructure comparable to the clean drinking water and sanitation management provided to their citizens by more affluent countries, the report advised.

[유엔본부= AP/뉴시스]

Source: Donga

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