Despite 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, water scarcity is one of the most important challenges facing the world today and remains a significant threat to the globe’s ecosystems. Water is one of the world’s most vital resources, and without it, humanity cannot grow crops, sustain its life, and humans become receptive to numerous water-borne diseases affecting their quality of life.
Yet today, many do not realize how important it is to conserve water. Humanity must make significant strides in water conservations and creating water management plans to ensure that this generation and future generations do not suffer freshwater shortages.
Water conservation simply means cutting the consumption of water and salvaging freshwater efficiently to combat water scarcity issues. Moreover, it means preventing water pollution to ensure freshwater availability worldwide. It is believes that by 2050, one in four people will be affected by water shortages. Thus, one of the main United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, UN SDG6 is to ensure clean water access to the world by 2030.
There isn’t one single solution or method to water conservation. However, there are several solutions countries can conserve water and benefit from. Some of these solutions are redistributing water, modernizing irrigation systems, rainwater harvesting, and installation of water meters at homes and businesses to reduce water wastage.
The use of water in both the domestic and industrial sectors is deemed a major challenge to water security in Qatar. Moreover, as its population grows, its domestic water consumption has increased as well between 2010-2020. At a roughly 450 liters per person per day, the nation has one of the highest domestic water consumption rates in the world. This issue is exacerbated by citizens not having to pay their water bills.
In 2010, the country only had around 48 hours’ worth of water stored in case of an emergency. This led to the state-owned water utility company Kahramaa to invest in drinking water storage capacity and began the Water Mega Reservoirs project. This project aims to build 24 large concrete reservoirs to store seven days’ worth of water. This would meet the expected demand for water by 2026.
Lastly, Qatar hopes a new marketing campaign will encourage people to live more sustainably. Called Tarsheed, Kahramaa’s national campaign for the conservation and efficient use of water and electricity in Qatar aims to promote change in people’s habits. This campaign was created to provide information, raise awareness, and encourage citizens to decrease their daily water consumption.