UN 2023 Water Conference kicks off on Wednesday

The UN says that it will dedicate this year’s World Water Day, which is being marked today, to accelerating change to solve the water and sanitation crisis.

Its Water Action Agenda will be launched at the UN 2023 Water Conference which kicks off later today in New York. It is the first event of its kind for nearly 50 years.

In its last water report, the UN said that 2.3 billion people live in water-stressed countries, of which 733 million are high and critically water-stressed countries.

In South Africa, civil society organisation Green Peace says that demand for water is projected to exceed supply by 17 percent in 2030.

Nhlanhla Sibisi is a climate and energy campaigner at Green Peace..

“The challenge is also the fact that South Africa is a water scarce country. We are actually the 32nd driest country on the planet and that tells you that we have an obligation also to make sure that we really conserve our water resources. But, the main challenge is that from the existing water resources that we have as a country, we’ve also noticed that our infrastructure unfortunately is also not keeping up with the conservation and that tells you that we need to take a deep look into how we’re managing our infrastructure.”