World Water Day highlights the global water crisis. The UN reports that more people die annually from contaminated water than from all forms of violence, including wars. Over 90% of wastewater and 70% of industrial waste in developing nations is dumped untreated into surface waters. By 2025, over 1.8 billion people may live in areas with inadequate clean water supplies. The document features photos from around the world illustrating communities' daily struggles to access safe drinking water.

1. World Water Day: March 22, 2010
"The sheer scale of dirty water means more people now die from
contaminated and polluted water than from all forms of violence
including wars," the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) said.
This water well on the outskirts of Islamabad,
Pakistan, is used as a bath on Monday, March
22. "These deaths from unsafe water are an
affront to our common humanity, and
undermine the efforts of many countries to
achieve their development potential."
With no running water, villagers outside
Yangon, Myanmar, retrieve water from a
pond on March 21, part of a daily ritual.

2. Water from a cleaned up section of the
Nairobi River in Kenya is raised to greet U.N.
visitors to the work site on March 21. The
U.N. says that in developing countries, more
than 90 percent of raw sewage and 70
percent of untreated industrial wastes are
dumped into surface waters.
Standing water from recent heavy rain
engulfs an abandoned neighborhood near the
Salton Sea in Bombay Beach, Calif., on March
16. Cut off from a freshwater river supply,
the Salton Sea now serves mainly as an
agricultural drainage reservoir.
A boy drinks water from a communal clean
water source next to a contaminated river in
Cape Town, South Africa, on March 12. The
communal faucets in many poor areas are
often near contaminated water and pose
serious health risks. Some analysts predict
that by 2025 more than 1.8 billion people will
live in areas where uncontaminated water is
in short supply.

3. A boy collects plastic from a garbage-covered
river in Manila, Philippines, on March 21.
Pakistani women carry drinking water in pots
to their homes in Hyderabad, Sindh province,
Pakistan, on March 18. Women in rural areas
across the country have to travel many miles
to fetch drinking water from wells. Their
return journey takes around eight or nine
hours, with each bringing back three or four
liters. Pakistanis are facing shortage of clean
drinking water due to drying rivers and the
low level of water behind the country's dams.
A Bangladeshi child suffering from diarrhea
receives treatment in the International Center
for Diarrheal Disease Research's Bangladesh
hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on March 18.
The hospital admitted more than 400
patients every day over the prior week from
consuming polluted water. Water has been a
major problem for Dhaka residents. The
Dhaka Water and Sewerage Authority is
supplying 1.50 billion liters of water a day
against a demand of 2.25 billion liters as a
result of frequent power outages and a
subsidence in the groundwater level.

4. Cambodian villagers collect water from a
pond near northwest Phnom Penh, on March
21.
A sanitation worker cleans up Upper Lake in
Bhopal, India, on March 20. Asia's largest
artificial lake is lifeline for residents of
Bhopal, as it supplies drinking water to 60
percent of the city's population.