Water Security

A woman collects water A boy in Kenya collects Women in Iqaluit collect

from a public water hole in drinking water from a water from the river after
Tanzania. polluted stream. their tap water became
contaminated.
Humans can live without food for up to 2 months if they have Precious: Valuable
water. Without water, we can only live about 3 days. Water is our
Resource: Something
most precious resource. We need it to drink, clean, cook, and stay that we use.
healthy.
Natural Resources
There are about 1,260,000,000,000,000,000,000 liters of water on include water, wood,
the planet. That is 1,260 million trillion liters! It seems like a lot, so and metals.
why do we have water security problems? Human Resources are
people available to do
Firstly, only 3% of that water is fresh and only 0.5% is accessible to work.
us to drink. 0.5% of 1,260 million trillion liters is still a lot of water,
but it is not distributed equally around the planet. To make things Distributed: shared
worse, we have polluted a lot of our water supplies terribly.
Polluted: Made dirty
Many communities around the world pump sewage (toilet waste)
Sewage: household
directly into the rivers and lakes where we get our water. Factories water waste including
dump toxic waste like dyes and chemicals directly into water what comes from your
sources. One of the worst sources of water pollution is from farms, showers, laundry, and
toilet.
who dump animal waste, fertilizers, and pesticides into our water
ways. Fertilizers: Chemicals
we put onto the Earth to
Two-thirds of the world’s population, around 4 billion people, make plants grow big.
suffer from water scarcity (drought) at least once a year. One-
quarter (25%) of the world’s population does not have access to Pesticides: Chemicals
we use to kill insects.
safe drinking water. In many countries around the world, it is very
unhealthy to drink the tap water. People who cannot afford Scandal: When
bottled water suffer from terrible stomach problems and diseases. someone does
something bad that
Some people walk for a long way daily to get buckets of water to shocks people. For
carry back their houses. Every year, over a million people die from example, if a teacher
problems related to unsafe drinking water. took money to give
good grades to students,
Despite Canada’s wealth of freshwater lakes and rivers, 25% of that would be a scandal.
communities in Canada suffer from water shortages each year. In a
Analysts: People who
recent government scandal, it was discovered that 100 Canadian analyse or study
something deeply.
Indigenous communities are forced to boil their water before they
drink it because of poorly constructed water systems. Pressure is Predict: Make a guess
being put on the government to put proper sewage treatment about the future. “I
plants in every community and stop allowing farms, factories, and predict it will rain
tomorrow.”
communities from dumping toxins into our precious water
supplies. Toxins: Poisons

Water is a big issue globally and even water-rich nations like

Canada have water insecurity issues. Analysts predict that in the
future, nations will fight over access to water the way they fight
over access to oil in our time.

1. How long can we live without water?

a. 2-3 months
b. 2-3 weeks
c. 2-3 days

2. What percentage of the world’s water is drinkable?

a. 3%
b. 0.5%
c. All of it is drinkable

3. What are three (3) ways that our drinking water becomes polluted?

4. How many people suffer from drought each year?

5. What percentage of people suffer from water insecurity on our planet?

6. Have you ever lived or visited somewhere where you could not drink the tap water? What
did you do for your drinking and cooking water?
7. Think about the water you use every day for cooking, washing, drinking, and cleaning. The
average American person uses around 300 litres of water per day. If a bucket can hold 20
litres of water, how many buckets would you have to carry your water from a local well to
meet your water needs?

8. How many people die each year from problems related to unsafe drinking water?

9. How can we preserve our drinking water supplies and prevent water insecurity? Think of
two (2) ways we can fix this situation.