Global Water Crisis - Behind the News

[Music] earth is known as the blue planet and all the blue stuff is water there's 326 million trillion gallons of it so you'd think there'd be enough to go around right well 97 of water on Earth is salty so not something we can easily use two percent is frozen fresh water and that leaves us with just one percent for all of humanity as it turns out this one percent isn't always looked after or available to everyone [Music] water is a human rights but water is in deep trouble yeah he's right there is a problem here almost half of the world's population experiences something called water scarcity which is when water becomes more difficult to access for at least one month a year for some people this can mean something as simple as hand washing just doesn't happen as often making them more likely to get sick for others it means not having access to clean drinking water at all in 2019 alone it's estimated 1.5 million people around the world died because of unclean water or poor sanitation and hygiene [Music] over the past few decades this problem has been getting worse because of a number of different factors like our Rising population we've hit 8 billion people now that's a lot of humans needing water to drink grow food and maintain hygiene with more people also comes more pollution and of course there's climate change which has led to more common and extreme droughts in some places and too much water in others which can actually cause the contamination of clean water you might be thinking this is an overseas problem we're fine here in Australia but we actually have our own Water Crisis [Music] Australia is the driest inhabited continent on the planet and we use a lot of water especially in our agriculture industry and our demand for water often outweighs how much we actually have available this led to towns in many places across the country having long-term water restrictions and those extreme weather events we've experienced in Australia lately like floods can lead to long-term problems in our waterways like the millions of dead fish that have been floating down the darling River recently while this all sounds pretty negative there's plenty we can do to fix the state of water this is why the UN held the Water conference so countries can come together and agree on a new water action agenda billions of dollars will be going towards things like water conservation improving water recycling technology the restoration of ecosystems like wetlands and of course stepping up the fight against climate change may we all be United by water action [Music] experts say if we're responsible that one percent of fresh water could be enough for everyone [Music] thank you

Channel: Behind the News

Views: 10,564

Keywords: Water Scarcity, Is there enough water for everyone, Global Water crisis, Behind the News, Primary School Resources, Primary Teacher, Primary School Lessons, Lesson Planning, Teacher Resources

Id: IPU0S4XQGaU

Length: 3min 36sec (216 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 08 2023