Water Aid charity creates land art in England marking World Water Day

World

Published: 2021-03-17 10:15

Last Updated: 2024-04-24 09:18


Credit: Jordan Times
Credit: Jordan Times

Ahead of World Water Day on March 22, the charity Water Aid teamed up with Sand in Your Eye Wednesday, an art company with a long history of creating giant pieces of land art in Whitby, north England, to make a 60 meter picture of an Ethiopian girl carrying water.

The picture, threaded with lines to make it look like dry, cracked earth, is symbolically washed away by the sea as the tide comes in.

An artist from Sand In Your Eye, Jamie Wardley, said that the art work is to "draw attention to climate change (...) and the impact of climate change and water stress."

He added that the cracked effect in the art piece aims to symbolize the drought that climate change will cause. Due to it being right by the sea, "The rising tide is the rising sea levels that we're going to face in the future," said Wardley.

This year according to UNWater, World Water Day will be celebrated in an online event. The World Water Day celebrates water and raises awareness of the global water crisis, and a core focus of the observance is to support the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6: water and sanitation for all by 2030.

SDG 6, was a part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by all UN member states in 2015. This agenda provides a blueprint for peace and harmony worldwide, wherein 17 goals, or SDGs were created to call for immediate action to achieve prosperity by all countries in a global partnership

According to ReliefWeb, Jordan is one of the most water scarce countries in the world. The Kingdom's groundwater is being used at twice the rate at which it can be replaced and almost half of all water supplied by municipal networks is lost before reaching the intended population.

Water scarcity negatively impacts the lives of all people in Jordan, but especially in the poorest and more marginalized communities where families cannot afford to pay private water vendors.