by Anthony G. Craine
From his office at Rotary World Headquarters, R.I. President Glenn E. Estess Sr. can gaze out at the vast blue expanse of Lake Michigan, one of the five Great Lakes which contain roughly one-fifth of the world’s surface fresh water. Although it’s comforting to see that seemingly endless supply of the vital resource, Glenn Estess knows that many around the world are not so fortunate. So he made water an emphasis of his year as president.

Western Highlanders in Papua New Guinea have strong customs and traditions. Both men and women dress colourfully on special occasions. Many tribal groups take the opportunity to show off their traditional finery at the annual Mount Hagen Show, but life is not always so happy as clean water supply is a problem for many villagers in the area.

Water is life. An adult can survive without food for weeks, but the human body can’t go more than a few days without water. Yet, an alarming number of people struggle every day to get water. ‘‘It’s daunting when you think that 1.1 billion are without access to safe drinking water and 2.4 billion without sanitation,’’ said Ron Denham, a member of the Rotary Club of Toronto-Eglinton, Canada, and general co-ordinator of the 2004-05 Rotary International Water Resources Task Force. He defines access as having a source of safe water within 200 metres of home. For many of those 1.1 billion people, that lack of access translates into something much more remote than 200 metres. In rural communities in Africa and Asia, women and children often devote several hours of their day retrieving water. This deprives the women of time spent working or otherwise supporting the family, and it deprives children of time at school, promoting a cycle of poverty difficult to break.

And even when these families are able to procure supplies of water, the quality of that water can often vary, leaving them susceptible to diseases.

According to the United Nations, some 6,000 children die every day from diseases associated with the lack of safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.

The painful irony is that water appears to be abundant on our blue planet. It covers more than two-thirds of the Earth’s surface. But only 2.5 per cent of that water is fresh water. And 99.7 per cent of that fresh water is unavailable, trapped in glaciers, ice sheets and mountainous areas.