The panacea for future hydro-political conflicts: You-Me-Us!

You, me and us, saving water! The old adage is clear that prevention is better than cure, and indeed saving is better than expending to beg tomorrow. You care, I care and we care, but our care is little less than careless if we don't care for important things.

How often have your buying decisions been influenced by an advertisement or awareness campaign? Put simply, how often have you been reminded to do your favourable activity? More specifically, how often have you been reminded of the birthday of your beloved one? Yaa, some don't have beloved ones, so let me put it this way, how often have you set an alarm to remind you of that most important meeting? Its inherent, it's inborn to act on a reminder. So my question is, why we are not reminding each other oftenly of the most important lifesaving resource. Water. We drink water every day, if you don't drink water, at least you take watery products. So lets remind each other to Save Water, Save Life.

Turn a blind ear to this script but read on and at the end save water and save life. The opposite is true that if you don't save water you don't save life. Remember that the future gamut of conflicts relate to water. Conflicts can result in wars and subsequent deaths. Look, this is how it will start. The powerful, the strong and the courageous will take the lion's share of water resources available. However, for the strong and powerful to enjoy their water resources they need the effort of the less powerful. Consequently the less powerful will devise ways of enhancing their power and fight back. This will be the beginning of overarching problems, all around water.

See how water woos have evolved. They are evolving as climate change, and I do believe in climate change and climate variability- if you want to call it that way. I know you have been following up trends that's why you don't want to believe in change but variability. Then if its variability it means springs, well and wetlands have diminished their outputs in the past 20 years. If the status quo persists, it means boreholes will need deepening every 20 years. Why? Drawing closer to today, are you noticing that cities in Zimbabwe can't explain why they are not able to provide good quality water to residents.  You have all rights to disagree with me, but note that if cities knew their water challenges why are they not solving the problems of poor water quality, insufficient water. Why have they put by-laws that prohibit using hose-pipes, watering of gardens, construction works using municipal water? If you still can't believe me, take a few minutes to imagine the number of Jojo tanks we now have in towns, let alone the number of private and public boreholes drilled to augment municipal water supplies.

It's very professional and human to differ in view points, but let's agree to agree that water is a finite resource which is becoming less available by day for whatever reasons. Water is one resource that supports life directly. This is undisputable. Just take a day without drinking water and your intellectual capacity will realign to the inherent importance and peculiarity of water.  Then why are we silent about a lifesaving resource? Some are arms up conserving lions, elephants, rhinos etc. Imaging in the process helicopters have been reserved to thwart poaching, drones are on surveillance with budgets that cannot be veeramented. Anthems are sung daily, national pledges recited every morning, but no one stops to think about a lifesaving resource.  Don't misquote me here, I am principally saying lets have more time to stop and talk or shout about water saving. We have been hearing of change in curriculum in schools towards a new curriculum that is child centred and pragmatic, however, in all the singing, there is no stanza reading Save Water Save Life.

I may not delve into the finer details now about practicable, tried and tested methods of saving water but think critically about saving water now. Let it be clear to you that the water we are swimming in today, tomorrow we will be singing about it from a distance. I don't have all the time in this world, neither do you, and that's why I have taken my precious time to write this article and you have taken your most precious time to read this article. Congratulations! I have resolved to remind you to save water every 17th day of the month.  You have a role to play. Let's talk water saving in our homes, in our work places, and in our meetings. Save water, save life. All drops count.