Water is the Next Gold.

I stood at there watching the rain drops eating the ground with relish. With each drop, the water flowing at the front door of this building I was in kept increasing. At some point, it looked like a river flowing by and not even a seasonal one for that matter.

After about an hour of heavy downpour, the river was no more. Gallons of water had seeped through the thirsty ground to its fullness while the rest had flown into the open sewer a few meters down the road that flows by often termed a river but which I think otherwise.

Two days later, I watch the prime time news and there is this story being run on the scarcity of water within the city. That the water which flows to the slums and part of the estates are controlled by cartels. In fact some of the water is so dirt to a level of causing never ending diseases to children. Most of the residents here know water as very rare commodity, one to be equated to flowing gold.

I pondered of the issues of water scarcity and I could realize that it is a matter of time before water becomes a source of conflict. As a matter of fact, it will become the central issue of conflict spanning people, counties to even regions.

It is just the other day the county of Murang’a was at logger heads with Nairobi County over the Ndakaini dam. The point of contention was simply water. It might have looked a simple issue, yet looking at it critically, one realizes that it could spell disaster in the future.

As the days go by and years roll past, water scarcity becomes an everyday vocabulary. Water rationing becomes a lifestyle and the cost of purchase of this resource soars higher and higher. The Water bodies within the city too are becoming too polluted to a point of no reclamation.

A while back Israel had a serious conflict with Palestine over this precious resource called water. And when Israel discovered the magic of water desalination, they had enough to use and an excess to spare which they started selling to Palestine.

Singapore on the other hand discovered that her water resources were not sustainable on the long run. So they embarked on harnessing every opportunity to harvest water throughout its landmass to ensure that they had security for this resource all the year around.

What they did was to design the city in such a way that a kind of artificial water body was developed at a central place where the gradient could favor the water to collect together ensuring that there was no water going to waste especially during the rainy season.

They went an extra mile to develop their water treatment to ensure that they didn’t just have water but one that is clean and safe for use.

For china, they innovated around moving their water from the south towards the north where it wasn’t available in enough supply. They thus transformed the place to a water independent place because they understand the importance of water going forward.

The sustainable development goals desire, as one of their objectives to ensure that all people in the world should have access to safe and clean water for drinking and use. With this at the back of our minds, we need to do everything in our capacity to ensure that we achieve this goal.

The aspect of unsafe water being drank and used by people in our country should be a gone tale. We have institutions of higher learning that need to collaborate to ensure we have better and efficient ways of treating water and making it clean for human consumption.

These institutions should work closely with other government agencies such as the environment sector to ensure pollution is reduced to its bare minimum so that our water bodies will be flowing with cleaner water for use.

And we might have lost it while designing this city from the onset. But that doesn’t mean we should continue in that direction. Going forward we should design this city, its homes and houses in such a way that they use less water, and also become energy conscious so that any unnecessary wastes of these resources can be curbed at the very base level.

And last we are among the countries recycling the least amount of water in the world. We need to turn this story the other way round and start by perhaps being the leading in the continent or even in the region. Then we should commit ourselves to ensuring we continue increasing that efficiency until we become among the highest.

With the right innovation and policy implementation mechanisms, we can achieve this. We could have contributed to a high extent towards ensuring the achievement of the sustainable development goals and especially goal number 6 on clean water and sanitation.

Together we can.

End.