This year, the global theme is glaciers, which store 70 per cent of the world’s fresh water.<\/em><\/p>\n As well as noting the role Malagasy communities are playing in protecting this vital resource, we also note the challenges Malagasy people face accessing clean water for drinking, washing and general hygiene, the dangers resulting from those challenges, and what we and our partners are doing to help.<\/em><\/p>\n This may not be a sentence you were expecting to read, but Malagasy people are on the front-line of the global battle to preserve and protect the world’s glaciers.<\/p>\n Today (Saturday 22 March 2025) is World Water Day.<\/p>\n The event’s organisers have chosen glaciers as the main focus of this year’s event.<\/p>\n Glaciers contain almost 70 per cent of the world’s water and around two billion people around the world rely on water from glaciers, snowmelt and mountain run-off for drinking, agriculture and energy production.<\/p>\n But in 2023, glaciers lost more than 600 gigatons of water, the largest loss registered in 50 years (the entire period during which glacial water loss has been recorded). This alarming loss is something we do not yet know how to \u2013 or even if we can \u2013 recover or repair.<\/p>\n A clear cause of this loss is climate change \u2013 as carbon levels in the atmosphere increase, temperatures also increase, and glaciers melt in ever increasing volumes, flushing freshwater into the sea, where it ceases to be possible to drink, as well as disrupting ocean currents, altering weather patterns and raising sea levels.<\/p>\n This also raises an important point about the world in which we live.<\/p>\n Madagascar has zero glaciers, and does not rely on glacial water for survival, so how are Malagasy communities important to the fight to preserve them?<\/p>\n While Madagascar does not have glaciers, it does have rainforests: some of the world’s most fertile regions, teeming with in many cases unique life.<\/p>\n These are the reason that Madagascar is one of only four carbon sinks \u2013 countries which emit less carbon than they remove from the atmosphere \u2013 on the planet.<\/p>\n But 80 per cent of Malagasy people rely entirely on agriculture \u2013 including subsistence farming \u2013 for food and\/or income. And 79.9 per cent of Malagasy people live on or below the global poverty baseline of \u00a31.73 per day.<\/p>\n In a bitter irony, despite living in a country which removes carbon from the atmosphere, Madagascar is currently one of the countries worst-affected by the impacts of climate change, including droughts, flooding and extreme rainfall washing away irreplaceable fertile soil \u2013 all of which devastate crops.<\/p>\n All of these things \u2013 poverty, reliance on agriculture and climate change destroying crops \u2013 puts Malagasy people in direct danger of food shortage or worse. And this, unsurprisingly, can tempt those people, through no more than desire to survive, to clear areas of rainforest to access more land.<\/p>\n Our Resilient Forests and Livelihoods programme<\/a> works to provide Malagasy people with the capacity and agency to develop and deliver climate-resilient practices and initiatives, including agro-forestry and greater farming efficiency, so that they can increase crop yields, reduce food scarcity, improve incomes and lives, and protect, nourish, grow and expand the forest. Included in their achievements, Malagasy people are preventing the removal of areas of forests, and have helped replant hundreds of hectares of forest.<\/p>\n In this way, some of the world’s poorest people, with zero experience or proximity to glaciers, are standing against and fighting to prevent glacier loss all over the world.<\/p>\n Another, also vital, element of World Water Day’s focus is to support the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal Six: Water and sanitation for all by 2030.<\/p>\n It’s a matter close to our heart.<\/p>\n There are 31.2 million people in Madagascar.<\/p>\n Of those, 13.8 million don’t have access to clean water, 25.2 million don’t have a decent toilet and almost 1,800 children aged under five die each year from diarrhoea caused by dirty water and poor toilets.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/moneyformadagascar.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/success-story-Mitsinjo_Photo-2-300x272.jpg\")
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Last October, ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/moneyformadagascar.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/WWD2025_SocialmediaCard3_ENG-300x300.png\")
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