Filenews 25 June 2024
It's hard to imagine a day without water. Water is the guardian of our environment, keeping ecosystems safe, regulating the climate and nourishing biodiversity. It is a precious resource that belongs to nature and local communities. But we must manage it with caution, as it is now at considerable risk.
With more than half of the world's wetlands gone, and many lakes and rivers drying up or facing high levels of pollution*, water scarcity is now a reality for many.
We are now taking action to address water challenges and help reduce our water footprint.
Water is an irreplaceable component of all our products. We also depend on water to clean and cool our equipment at each bottling plant. It also nourishes the croplands that provide our natural ingredients. But its importance is much greater. It is the most basic daily need for the life of our communities, now and in the future.
One of our key goals for sound water management is to return a total of 2 trillion litres to nature and communities worldwide between 2021 and 2030 – as much as it would take to fill over six billion bathtubs**.
One way to achieve this is through The Living Danube. This is a collaboration between WWF-CEE and ICPDR*** with funding from The Coca-Cola Foundation****. The Danube River is vital in Europe, as it is the most important international watershed in the world, shared by 19 countries and over 83 million people.
For nearly a decade, the project has helped return more than 4,800 Olympic-sized swimming pools to nature and communities and restore vital wetlands, rivers and floodplains equivalent to 7,422 football fields. All this, along the heart of the Danube in 11 regions in Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania.
This river conservation program brought a wave of change to nature as endemic birds and mammals returned to their natural habitats. A wave of change that has also helped local communities, addressing water scarcity and thus helping to boost local economies and maintain the livelihoods of fishermen and farmers in river border countries.
This is just one way we are helping to address the world's biggest common water challenges. In Cyprus, our programmes to address water challenges are already a decade old. The "Zero Drop – Mission Water" program, implemented by the Global Water Partnership – Mediterranean (GWP-Med) and funded by The Coca-Cola Foundation, implements technical solutions for saving water in areas facing severe water scarcity, while developing infrastructure for better management and preservation of water resources.
https://www.gwp.org/en/GWP-Mediterranean/zero-drop/zerodrop-mission-water
A project in Aglantzia, completed in 2023, is the latest example of this initiative. As Cyprus is one of the countries with the greatest water scarcity in Europe, providing water for public green spaces is a challenge for the local community. Irrigation water has significant economic and environmental costs, as it requires the operation of energy-intensive pumps to extract it from the limited underground water resources of the island. As a result, we need green in parks, which are a vital resource for the quality of life of city dwellers.
To help address this challenge, "Zero Drop – Mission Water" implemented technical interventions in May 2023 in the Municipality of Aglantzia, using recycled water and smart technology to irrigate green spaces. A new irrigation system with recycled water was installed, allowing municipal trucks to fill with treated wastewater at the replenishment station and use it to irrigate many parks in Aglantzia.
This is just the beginning of a long journey. We will continue to address the problems of water with dedication, playing our part in safeguarding this critical resource for future generations.
