World Water Day: Karla Souza and thinking about what really matters

On World Water Day, actress Karla Souza reflects on the importance of making water part of the global transformation needed to ensure sustainable development.

Today, on World Water Day, I’d like to admit that I have not always given the same importance as I do today to water as a resource. I had the privilege of seeing water as something which was always available to me and this kept me in my comfort zone until I began to question myself and investigate further.

Fortunately, life gave me experiences that helped me emerge from that bubble. Being a mother has been one of these experiences, because it has made me re-assess my priorities and focus on the education and  care of my children and the world I am bequeathing to them.

I believe that something happens when we change and focus our attention away from ourselves and it is then that we begin to notice other issues and see them in a different way and we give them priority. In my case, two of many priorities are to feed my children a healthy diet and give them a fair and inclusive environmental education.

For me and my family, another two very important things in our list of priorities are about saving water and the nature around us. It is very important for me to teach them that we should never let our privilege prevent us from thinking about what really matters.

Today, around 750 million people in the world lack an adequate supply of drinking water. More than 2 billion people do not have either access to drinking water or basic sewage treatment facilities. This is a problem I discovered at close hand, thanks to ACCIONA.

Two years ago, I travelled to Oaxaca, Mexico, where I visited the indigenous Zapotec communities with limited access to drinking water and sanitation. This water problem is even more serious when accompanied by a lack of sustainable electricity sources, since together these factors can make it almost impossible for the communities to progress.

We are living in an era of profound social and environmental change in which we must continue to demand and fight for global justice. We can pressurize governments as well as companies also thinking about what really matters: the value of a society with the tools to achieve sustainable development; the means to build infrastructure guaranteeing basic services such as for water; all the communities worldwide that have been oppressed throughout history and affected most severely by climate change. To be able to fight the climate crisis – and the water crisis that brings about – we all need to get involved.