By Francesco Lolli

This 22nd March the 27th World Water Day will be celebrated since in 1992 it was established following the agreements of Agenda 21 as a moment of reflection, reporting and updating in terms of water resources and pollution by the Signatories of this historian (and now forgotten) congress.

The history of the blue planet, of water as the primary element of the very existence of life dates back to millions of years ago when from a planet completely covered by the seas this was the cradle of the first forms of life and as it still is: The first “Pioneers” of the mainland were amphibians that were still born deep in the seas and the egg is nothing but an aquatic “cradle” from which life is still born.
Water was the meeting point of growth of the first communities, which could not survive without it and water was the first highway to discover new worlds. Poseidon has always been the God of the unknown and of adventure, of tragedy and possibilities, while fresh water is synonymous with life and safety: our most vital and precious good and the possibility of settling sedentarily, raising and irrigating fields, grow.

On December 24th 1968 the Apollo 13 men took the first photograph taken from the space of our planet, with few clouds and the sun illuminating it by three quarters, which will become famous with the name of Earthrise: the “coming” of the earth, and it was perceived for the first time as this was blue, like the sea and not the earth or man was the predominant and characterizing element of the planet, in a splendid and dazzling perceptive repositioning of our existence, of the soil that we have available compared to the vastness of the planet.

Of all this water 97% is found in the seas, 2.1% in the polar ice caps (for now) and only 0.9% in rivers, lakes, glaciers and is sweet, unsalted and useful to humans and the terrestrial life of the planet relies on this ” laughable ” percentage.
Scientifically, the amount of water consumed by a population or a single individual is defined as a water footprint, which affects the resources available to them and the needs or sectors from which it is consumed, and is an increasingly unstable equilibrium.
Before the twentieth century there were no major water crises as water consumption and the impact of populations on it was limited to subsistence, guaranteeing a natural environmental balance in all regions of the planet. Even in the African deserts the water was rare, it was sufficient thanks to small and rudimentary tricks to sustain the nomadic populations that lived there.
The industrialization and dispersion of polluting gases in the atmosphere, starting from the first coal-fired industries up to today where the big industry, the engines and the chemical and transport revolution have saturated the atmosphere, have contributed to raising the temperature world and gave way to this Global Warming which is, together with the use for the food and non-food industry (75% of the fresh water is used for animal husbandry and agriculture) responsible for the water crisis we are facing and that has already seen manifest in the following decades.

The pollution of the atmosphere and the immoderate use of critical resources is a first reason for which we must treasure the water that we need, and of which we are first responsible as well as needy: The water resources we already have, and the seas, are today threatened precisely by this great industry and by the excessive consumption of resources and of which they are victims. Plastic and non-biodegradable waste constantly spills in rivers and seas (a plastic truck per minute, to give an idea) and they remain there, constantly adding to chemical and industrial waste and hydrocarbons responsible for so many environmental crises in the seas, and which are becoming the main problem for the sea and the fish fauna: in addition to becoming “guardians” of land waste, the seas are saturating with oil and derivatives coming from environmental catastrophes such as shipwrecks and fuel leaks, accidents or defects (or losses) acceptable) coming from fossil fuel extraction and transportation plants, dispersing a greasy and lethal patina on the surface of the seas for the fish and marine ecosystem that it encounters, suffocating birds and fish, depriving the water of its natural exchange of oxygen with water. ‘environment.

From the water we are born and from the water we bring life. We see that it is so much and it becomes difficult to worry about it. But you need to.