Our Contribution to the Natural Water Cycle

On a daily basis we are taught about how wonderful nature is in being able to always provide us with clean water, water without which life would not be possible.

Despite the fact that only 3% is currently available as fresh water necessary for consumption, nature is in charge of keeping it always available to give us life through it.

But what are we doing to help nature continue to give life to us and our future generations? Are human beings really guaranteeing the availability of this resource in the future? And what can a few do to make a change soon, before that change is no longer possible?

Worldwide, most of us are not aware of the issue of pollution that we generate and its repercussions on our own health and on the availability of water in the near future; there is a lack of awareness in reusing the resource as rainwater, we waste excessive amounts of water where we could optimize its use, we throw away solid waste, plastics, chemical substances without any awareness to the bodies of water from disinfectants to extremely dangerous pesticides and we forget that everything it's a cycle where what we throw away comes back to us again.

Up to now, our contribution to nature has been to contaminate thousands of cubic meters of clean water that nature provides us and return it to bodies of water with a terrible quality, killing most of life or at least significantly deteriorating its biodiversity. Elders pray to see bodies of water again in conditions that more than 50 years ago were much better; But the question is, what can we do to change what we have done to nature up to now, especially with the water resource?

Education and awareness at all levels, as well as in each home, can minimize the damage to bodies of water; Minimal changes such as saving the water we use, closing taps when we don't need them, taking showers instead of baths, collecting rainwater to reuse it when watering the lawn, correctly disposing of waste such as oils, chemical solvents, solid waste, as well as minimizing the use of chemicals for cleaning homes, measures like these will help make water treatment much easier and affect the environment less. Let's start from each home, each workplace, because the repercussions will be for everyone; that our contribution is to help generate life and generate health for all.

On behalf of the Secretary of Natural Resources and Environment of Honduras SERNA, its authorities and with the help of projects such as GEF CREW+, small steps will continue to be taken to improve the quality of our bodies of water. Some of the actions of the GEF CReW+ project in Honduras is support through wastewater treatment systems in cities that lacked them, such as Omoa and La Mosquitia, supporting communities to make treatment systems sustainable, as well as measures to proper management of solid waste.

Improving and applying regulations that minimize the contamination of marine-coastal spaces, as well as generating cartographic information that allows the identification of environmentally sensitive areas in marine zones and spaces.

The task is big, but if each one contributes to the natural water cycle, little by little we will generate more life through water, because water is life...

Autor: Victor Pineda. Chief of the Environmental and Food Microbiology Lab. Center for Contaminant Study and Control (CESCCO in Spanish)