ABSTRACT
More people using more water for more purposes have made it ever more difficult to provide enough water for drinking, irrigation and industry.
Clean water is often expensive enough in industrialised nations; in developing countries the costs can be prohibitive, and dirty water brings disease and early death. Diarrhoea, often caused by bad water, kills 25 million people each year in the Third World, and 80% of the world's disease is linked to unsafe water and poor sanitation [63]. Wetlands, once regarded as sources of disease, can actually help maintain water quality, promote the rapid growth of plants, absorb toxic metals and chemicals, clean up polluted water, and even act as natural sewage treatment plants. One wetland scientist who has spent much time in African wetlands, John Gaudet, has likened a papyrus swamp to a septic tank depositing nutrients in the detritus below the floating vegetation mat.
