Every wasted drop of water is a job lost

Today marks the 23rd anniversary of World Water Day.

Each year, since its designation, UN-Water — the entity that coordinates the UN’s work on water and sanitation — sets a theme for World Water Day corresponding to a current or future challenge. This year’s theme — Water and Jobs — focuses on how livelihoods and economies can be transformed through access of adequate quantity and quality of water.

Water is a critical component in any economy, and creates and maintains jobs across all sectors in a country. It is estimated that 50 per cent (1.5 billion people) of the global workforce is employed in eight industries that depend on water and other natural resources: agriculture, energy, recycling, forestry, fisheries, manufacturing, building and transport.

Sustainable water resource management is an essential driver of ecologically sound and sustainable development. Conversely, unsustainable exploitation of water, among other resources, has adverse impacts on economies, thus counterproductive to the gains of poverty reduction, job creation and development.

Through properly co-ordinated policies and investments, addressing the water-job relationship is vital to sustainable development, especially in a country that relies heavily on agriculture like Kenya. All the expansive arid and semi-arid land in the country needs is water. The micro-irrigation schemes among other water-related ventures initiated in different parts of the country prove a case of the significant number of jobs this can create if treated with the same seriousness we award other endeavours – like elections.

Therefore, the “Water and Jobs” theme should capture the minds of the policy makers at the national and county level, water sector experts and users in general, that water is a vitally important flowing link to the exploitation of other resources. All the sector players, consequently, must recognise the impact it has on human rights, economies, vulnerable populations and gender, and formulate and implement strategies that counter the water challenges for job creation and economic growth. Every wasted drop is a job lost, can you imagine that?