An environmental activist and Executive Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation, HOMEF, Nnimmo Bassey, has emphasised the need to secure our potable water sources and the entire aquatic ecosystems with a view to securing and promoting cultural practices, preservation of knowledge and enhancement of livelihoods especially for those in the fishing business.
This was contained in a statement made available to INFO DAILY by Communication and Media Officer, HOMEF, Kome Odhomor, as part of activities to mark this year’s World Water Day with the theme: ‘Groundwater, making the invisible visible.’
INFO DAILY reports that World Water Day is celebrated every 22nd of March across the globe.
According to Bassey, as the world celebrate the Day, human must treat water with respect, stressing that “water is life and
access to clean, healthy water to meet daily needs is a fundamental
human right.”
He noted that though climate change can be blamed for droughts and related water crisis
faced in the world today, water pollution from the dumping of wastes and
release of harmful chemicals from industries, including those in the
petroleum sector, into the water bodies also pollute the water bodies and intensify shortages of potable water.
While warning that water cannot be commodified or privatized, the Executive Director added: “The intrinsic value of this prime gift of Nature but be respected and
protected.”
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He continues: “Water is not a commodity for privatization. It is important that our rivers, creeks, lagoons, and oceans must not be seen as waste dumps for continual pollution and destruction of aquatic lives,” Bassey
stressed.
“We must be mindful of the fact that plastics and toxic items dumped in our waters get eaten by fish and enter our food chain thereby endangering our health. valuing water as this year’s theme implies charges all of us to wake up to the responsibility of protecting our water ways and to oppose all forms of privatization of water.”
He therefore called for a realignment of human relationship to water bodies including the oceans as zones of life and not zones for exploitative and polluting economic activities.
“Water is not a commodity that should be privatized, neither is it a commodity for anyone to lay ownership claim to,” he added.