Private Institute for Climate Change Research, Guatemala. Every year, on March 22nd, the world unites in the celebration of World Water Day, established in 1993 by the United Nations, just 25 years ago.
The UN celebrates each year with a special topic. For this 2018, the main topic runs around the nature and its importance as an allied to overcome the challenges that this resource currently faces.
Nature for Water
This year’s theme explores how we can use nature to overcome the water challenges of the 21st century.
Environmental damage, together with climate change, is driving the water-related crises we see around the world. Floods, drought and water pollution are all made worse by degraded vegetation, soil, rivers and lakes.
When we neglect our ecosystems, we make it harder to provide everyone with the water we need to survive and thrive.
Nature-based solutions have the potential to solve many of our water challenges. We need to do so much more with ‘green’ infrastructure and harmonize it with ‘grey’ infrastructure wherever possible. Planting new forests, reconnecting rivers to floodplains, and restoring wetlands will rebalance the water cycle and improve human health and livelihoods.
ICC and World Water Day
As part of the celebration, the ICC made a strategic alliance with the Maria Josefa Rosado Lara High School of Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa, and the Del Valle University Southern Campus, to talk to 400 kids about the importance of water and the protection of this resource. The talk was facilitated by Ronal Perez of ICC, and supported by Robin de Leon of ICC, and Alfredo Lopez of UVG.
