Raiding the Water Bank

The world faces a great number of problems today and many of them relate to water. When the United Nations established its Millennium Development Goals, improving the global water supply was an important priority. At present there are a billion people on Earth who do not have reliable access to fresh water. There are more than two billion who do not have adequate sanitation. In response to growing problems associated with water supply and quality world-wide, the UN declared 2003 the International Year of Fresh Water. In 2005 the United Nations declared the UN Decade for Action, Water for Life, as a means of responding to what has now been identified as a full-blown global water crisis. Some 85 countries are engaged in this initiative.The purpose of the UN Water for Life partnership in Canada is to put Canadian water issues in a global context. The goal of this initiative, which includes dozens of government and private sector partners, is to learn from others so that issues...