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Celebrate World Water Day 2020 with the GEMS/Water CDC

22 Mar 2020
World Water Day 2020

The 22nd March is World Water Day. This International celebration was officially established in 1993 to help raise awareness of our freshwater resources throughout the world.

This years’ World Water Day is a bit different because of the pandemic of COVID-19. For obvious reasons, the events have been cancelled in most places and some are transforming those events to adapt them into a virtual environment. Therefore, we still can celebrate this special day from the comfort of our own home. How?

Here you have a brief overview of the celebrations of World Water Day hosted by the GEMS/Water Capacity Development Centre (CDC) in the last three years.

In 2017, the theme of World Water Day was  Why Waste Water? and put a focus on the reduction and reused of water. That year, Dr Deborah Chapman, Director of the UN Environment GEMS/Water CDC, offered a seminar about the need for water quality monitoring to support Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goal for Water. Dr Deborah Chapman explained the role of the Centre in supporting the countries to meet Goal 6.

You can watch the full seminar here:

https://ucc.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=4b842ae3-e647-4cf7-a047-4ae6d0d18537&query=Deborah%20Chapman

The World Water Day of 2018 celebrated the theme Nature for Water. The GEMS/Water CDC invited back then to Dr Simon Harrison, who gave a talk about the topic entitled Towards nature-based solutions to river pollution and flooding. You have also access to this talk in the following link: https://ucc.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Embed.aspx?id=7b40ee90-6392-492c-861e-a8ab01330783&v=1

Last year, 2019, GEMS/Water CDC with the collaboration of the Centre for Global Development of UCC, invited Izzy Bishop to celebrate World Water Day and its theme Leave No One Behind. Izzy is the Research Manager of Freshwater Watch and she gave a talk in the impact of citizen science on global water quality and what this means for communities around the world. Check out the entire talk here: https://ucc.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=b6cda946-7af9-4725-a9b2-aa0901042583&query=World%20Water%20Day

This year’s them is Water and Climate Change, and has three clear messages:

  • We cannot afford to wait. Climate policy makers must put water at the heart of action plans.
  • Water can help fight climate change. There are sustainable, affordable and scalable water and sanitation solutions.
  • Everyone has a role to play. In our daily lives, there are surprisingly easy steps we can all take to address climate change.

 

Want to learn more? Check out the official website of World Water Day for this year: https://www.worldwaterday.org/2020-home/learn/

They also have an interactive map with events, some of them will be live on Sunday so don’t miss this opportunity.

https://www.worldwaterday.org/2020-home/act/

Stay safe and keep learning new things every day!

UNEP GEMS/Water Capacity Development Centre

UNEP GEMS/Ionad Forbartha Acmhainneachta Uisce

Environmental Research Institute, Ellen Hutchins Building, University College Cork

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