In Malaysia, we are fortunate to receive an abundance of rainfall, averaging from 2,000mm to 4,000mm annually. Having plentiful rainfall each year, many of us may not understand or appreciate where the water that flows from our taps really comes from.
Did you know that 97% of all the water on earth is actually salt water ? With only a small proportion of freshwater left, even then 2/3 of that is unavailable for our use because it is frozen in glaciers and ice sheets. As a result, we only have access to about 1% of freshwater and this little amount is all we have to meet the needs of more than 7 billion people on the planet.
Most of our water resources starts its incredible journey in a catchment area long before it reach the water taps in our houses.
A water catchment is an area where water primarily from rainfall is collected by the landscape such as highland forests and hills. It will then feed the water into streams and rivers that flow through the area.
Our highland forests such as Fraser's Hill and Ulu Muda in Peninsual Malaysia and Upper Baleh in Sarawak are some of the prime water catchment areas that play a vital role in supplying clean water to the population within the respective areas.
