Save the wetlands

The government must encourage citizens to preserve water bodies in their vicinity.

Tuesday, February 2, marked World Wetlands Day, the day that commemorates the adoption of the Convention of Wetlands in 1971. This year's theme for World Wetlands Day—'Wetlands and Water'—highlights the importance of wetlands as a source of freshwater and calls on action for restoring them. It seeks to bring into focus the availability of water and its usage today and in the future, as only 2.5 percent of the world's available water is fresh water, and less than 1 percent is usable. The fact that our water use has increased six-fold in the past 100 years and we will require 55 percent more water by 2050 as the world population rises to nearly 10 billion tells us about the gravity of the impending global water crisis.