Few words about water
Just like electricity, we also need water all the time for all sorts of things, in our homes, at school, in our parks and playgrounds. The only countries in the world that use more water than we do per head are the USA and Canada! Take a look at a world map and you'll see that they are much, much bigger countries than the UAE and have much more natural water resources! And no country anywhere in the world uses more bottled water than we do!
But have you ever wondered where the water we use comes from?
About 75% of the surface of the earth is covered by water, but less than 3% of the water in all the world is fresh – the rest of it is salty! The sun’s heat makes water vapour evaporate from the oceans and seas, and when it reaches cooler air it condenses to form clouds. When the clouds are full of water, they release some of the water as rain, which fills rivers, lakes and streams.
With so much water in the world, why do we need to save it?
Well, here in the UAE we hardly have any rivers, lakes or streams. Every year, we only get a tiny bit of rain. We do have some water under ground. But we’ve been pumping so much of it out that nature can’t keep up. Which means we have to look at other ways of getting water.
So we use salt water. As we’ve said, most of the water in the world is salt water, which is not safe for drinking. To make it safe, it has to go through a very expensive process called desalination. In the UAE, all our drinking water and tap water is desalinated, which uses up a lot of electricity.
What’s more, fresh water and salt water can’t live together – the salt water always takes over the fresh water and makes it all salty. Using all that desalinated water is likely to pollute the little bit of fresh water we have left underground. This has a serious impact on places, people and wildlife. In the UAE it will make our beaches disappear, kill our marine life and wildlife and make the nation even hotter!
