World Water Day is every year on March 22nd and is the day to bring light on the fact that right now, more than 844 million people don’t have access to clean Water and sanitation.
For last year’s World Water Day in the MENA region’s commemoration, Sopho Kharazi wrote in his Water Stress Poses Greatest Threat to MENA Region.
The most water-scarce region in the world is the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) where more than 60% of the population has little or no access to drinkable water and over 70% of the region’s GDP is exposed to high or very high water stress.
Water scarcity in MENA involves multiple factors such as climate change leading to droughts and floods, low water quality, and poor water management in the context of fragility, conflict, and violence. This is one of the reasons why at the World Economic Forum 2015, experts on the MENA region stated that the water crisis is “the greatest threat to the region—greater even than political instability or unemployment”.
Poor water quality in the region is caused by unsustainable water consumption, pollution and untreated wastewater. The cost of these in the region represents 0.5-2.5% of the GDP annually. This causes multiple problems, ranging from waterborne diseases to the pollution of fresh water necessary for ecosystem services such as fisheries. For this reason, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, 17% of freshwater species in the region are on the brink of extinction.
Meanwhile, life carrying on, here is a story that happen to be part of everyday life in a country that had only a few weeks ago, very unusual heavy precipitations followed by heavy floods.
Jordan’s female plumbers
Mar 18, 2019
Safaa is one of Jordan’s few female plumbers. She runs her own company in Irbid, and together with her team of around 20 female plumbers, Safaa tries to raise awareness among her customers on the importance of preserving water in a water-scarce country like Jordan
While Jordan only has a small number of female plumbers, Safaa says demand for women in this profession is growing. “Having female plumbers has solved a big problem,” she said. “Women can now have repairs done in their homes at any time.”
Safaa also conducts her own training sessions for women in her field of profession. She recently jointed an International Labour Organization (ILO) Training of Trainers (ToT) programme to help her build better skills in coaching. The ToT programme provides participants with adequate learning methods, techniques and approaches that are needed to enable them to better transfer knowledge to other learners and apprentices.
- Watch the video about Safaa here.
- Read more about the ILO Training of Trainers (ToT) programme.
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