The City of Cape Town’s Water and Sanitation Department is appealing to all residents to please adhere to the specified times for watering gardens, lawns and plants in order to prevent water wastage.

This year the theme of the day is ‘Wetlands take care of water’ and the aim of the day is to draw attention to wetland habitats and the vital role they play in the environment and the human economy.

Research from the Aerospace Institute of the University of Stuttgart in Germany supports the theory that water has a memory - a claim that could change our whole way of looking at the world.

On average you should be drinking at least two litres of water per day, enabling your body to flush out all the waste products. But let’s be honest: who wants to drink two litres of bad tasting tap water each and every day?

All around the world people are showing their awareness of the wellbeing of the Earth. There are millions of talks, media reports and tons of information available on the internet regarding this subject.

Many communities across Africa are directly dependent on wetlands for their survival, while wetlands provide indirect, but crucial services to many others. Yet despite this, these critical ecosystems are deteriorating and their capacity to provide goods and services is increasingly diminished as a result of human activities.

A team of environmentalists under the leadership of Dr Carin van Ginkel of Cripsis Environment has developed a field guide for identifying our wetland plants. The study, titled ‘Easy identification of some South African wetland plants,’ offers a plethora of plants that people can find in the country.

Over the past 22 years, the Mondi Wetlands Programme (MWP) has moved wetland conservation from being a side issue to centre stage. This has irreversibly changed the way government, communities, public, as well as the forestry and sugar industries understand and manage their wetlands.

In 2010, the United Nations General Assembly named 2013 the International Year of Water Cooperation. This was done to highlight the need for water awareness and conservation.

Having gained a unique perspective of the local water environment through serving as chief director of the Department of Water Affairs, Dr Harrison Pienaar joined the CSIR last year as competence area manager of the Ecosystems Services research group.

Durban and Cape Town residents will have to start looking seriously at drinking recycled water from the local sewage works within the next few years. Water supplies are running out and there is not enough time to build big new dams.