Water and Sanitation for Life's Preservation

Introduction:
What is water?
World water condition
What is sanitation?
World sanitation condition
How are they related?

I. What is the role of Water and Sanitation in economic progress

II. What is the role of Water and Sanitation in maintaining Health
III. What is the role of Water and Sanitation in providing Quality of Life
IV. What can we do in regards with water and sanitation
1. Poppulation control
2. sustainable development
3. Personal Discipline
V. The Challenge to the youth for change
1. The future is in our hands
2. We are futures hope

Water and Sanitation for life's Preservation

I come before you this afternoon to ask you two simple questions.

What is water? And What is sanitation?

What is water?
On the surface this seems to be a very simple question. A scientific question the even
a first year high school student could answer. But this question demands a deep,
thoughtful, and comprehensive answer.For in that answer lies the fate of the human
race or even the fate of life as we know it. For water is life.

Water my dear friends, is life. When scientist started to look for life in other planets
the first thing they look for is water. For if there is water, there could possibly be life.
Living organisms are actually water. The cell the basic unit of life is 98 percent
water. Our body is water. Our brain is 80 percent water, our muscles are 95 percent
water, and even our bones is 60 percent water. We are indeed water. That without
water life would disappear.

“ But my dear friend” ,you might say, “ there is no reason to fear we are living on
earth, not Mars, where the surface is covered with 70 percent water.” “Our water
supply is limitless, there is no cause for worry.”

Friends, Ladies and gentlemen let me remind you. Yes the earth is 70 percent water,
but out of this 70 percent only only 1 percent is available for human use.
Only 1 percent.

This one percent is then shared among the different components of society.
Industries, cities, agriculture, mining, homes and families, and others. 70 percent of
this 1 percent goes to agriculture the remaining 30 percent are for other
components, including human use. Imagine, only a fraction of this 30 percent is
shared by over ( world poppulation) for drinking and sanitation needs.

This brings us to the second simple question: What is sanitation?

According to the United Nations, who declared 2008 as The Year of Sanitation, that
sanition is part of a “big idea” that involves the following:

• safe collection, storage, treatment and disposal,re-use,recycling of human excreta

specifically faeces and urine
• management, re-use, and recycling of solid wastes
• drainage and disposal, re-use and recycling of household wastewater (often
referred to as sullage or grey water);
• drainage of storm water ;
• treatment, disposal, re-use, recycling of sewage effluents;
• collection and management of industrial waste products; and
• management of hazardous wastes (including hospital wastes, and chemical/
radioactive and other dangerous substances).

In short, sanitation is all about our waste, what we do with them, and how we use
water in relation to these wastes. And when we talk about waste it all begins in us.
Waste is a very personal issue for all of us produce waste. And waste is always part of
life.

Looking back at the list of issues involve in sanitation we would come to realize that
sanitation does not only involve what we do in the comfort room but it involves the
preservation and management of our most precious resource: water.

But most of us, if not all of us, don't even give a thought about sanitation we enter
our comfort rooms. We take the issue of sanitation for granted because it is already
part of our daily routine. We always thought that everytime we need to comfort our
selves sanitation will be there for us.

Friends! -- wake up!

Four in every 10 citizen of the world does not have any access to any basic form of
sanitation. Every time one of these four needs to comfort herself, she needs to find
some secluded place, dig a hole, and do her thing. Imagine doing that 365 days a
year, for the rest of your life. Couple it with the fact that these segment of the world
population also has limited access, if not no access, to clean water.