Annual 6K “Walk For Water” will focus on lack of safe water and sanitation facilities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America
Washington, DC (April 22, 2013) – Did you know that six kilometers is the distance many women and children must walk every day to secure water in the developing world? Or that only one percent of water in the world is drinkable? And that the world’s freshwaters are degrading at rapid rates, leading to an increasingly water insecure world?
To draw attention to those facts and raise awareness of the global safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) crisis, the U.S. State Department, USAID, The Embassy of Sweden, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, and WASH Advocates will join hundreds of concerned citizens in Washington, DC for a 6K “Walk for Water” on Earth Day, Monday April 22 at 1:00pm.
The Walk for Water will take place outside the 21st Street Entrance of the US Department of State. Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy will kick off the event by delivering remarks outside the Department’s 21st Street entrance near the corner of Virginia Avenue NW.
The 6K Walk will lead just past the Washington Harbor, at the intersection of K Street and Water Street, where participants will be greeted by WASH Advocates, the World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, DC Water, and other partners, who will be handing out free water bottles and materials to all walkers. The Embassy of Sweden will be providing all walkers with water, free of charge.
Clean water, sanitation, and good hygiene are basic necessities most Americans take for granted, but for many children around the world, they can be the difference between life and death. In the world today, nearly 800 million people lack access to drinking water from an improved drinking water source such as a simple hand pump well or a piped water system and 2.5 billion people do not have access to improved sanitation (like a basic toilet).
“Water is fundamental to our diplomatic and development goals – including health, economic growth, food security, gender equality, and conflict mitigation. We know that when managed well, water allows economies to thrive and children to grow up healthy. Water can also build peaceful cooperation between neighbors,” noted U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.
He added, “Water security requires global cooperation to ensure people have the water they need, where they need it, when they need it, reliably and sustainably. That’s why we’re bringing together the best of American knowledge and ingenuity to scale-up integrative water solutions around the world.”
In the next few decades, more than half of the world’s people are expected to live with severe water scarcity. Healthy freshwater systems provide the basis for a healthy drinking water supply. Climate change, a growing global population, and increasing demands on water threaten to further burden our planet’s freshwater systems and hamper their ability to support healthy fisheries, mitigate floods, store water for periods of drought or nourish soils for agricultural production.
Americans have demonstrated their broad support for safe drinking water and sanitation efforts in the developing world. A 2012 poll by The Kaiser Family Foundation found that 67 percent of Americans believe that improving access to clean water should be the number one priority for U.S. efforts to improve health in developing countries.
As a consumer, you can reduce your ‘direct water footprint’ (home water use) by installing water saving toilets, applying a water-saving showerhead, closing the tap during teeth brushing, drinking tap water instead of bottled water, using less water in the garden and by not disposing medicines, paints or other pollutants through the sink.