Water Wars

In 2008, at the World Economic Forum, UN secretary Ban Gi Moon said: “The consequences for humanity are grave. Water scarcity threatens economic and social gains and is a potent fuel for wars and conflict”. 1.1 billion People worldwide don’t have access to safe drinking water, 75% of India and 80% of China’s surface water is polluted beyond use while 2.2 million people, mostly children are dying per year in developing countries because of no access to clean drinking water. The planet is progressively dessertified, people are dying, the biggest amount of the planet suffers with drought and as the world’s most precious resource is running out people are expected to fight for their right to water.

People will start immigrating to places where there is easiest access to water, resulting to overpopulation and internal conflict. Powerful countries as the US will turn their attention into manipulating countries with more sufficient water supplies and if not being able to, invade them while less fortunate, water-stressed countries will most likely be extinct. USA’s decision to build military bases, as well as the Bush family buying a lot of acres of land on the Paraguayan borders with Brazil are being disputed, as Brazil is one of the most water rich countries in the world. Experts go as far as naming Brazil the Middle East of water. The above might appear as fictional scenarios but according to World Water Crisis experts they are possible realities

Sir John Beddinghton, who at the moment is the Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government, dates the critical year in 2030 and calls it the “Perfect storm”

 – a time when the world will run out of water, energy and food.  

The most renowned water activist and expert in the world is probably Maude Barlow, according to whom three different problems make up the crisis – the dwindling freshwater supplies, inequitable access to water and the constantly growing corporate control of water. She points out that water should not be treated as a commodity but as a human right and common wealth.

Overall the causes of the water crisis as well as solutions for water conservation are complicated matters. The simplest way to explain a solution for the crisis is in Barlow’s own words:

 I feel that we need to have this covenant around water. And the covenant that I am talking about would have three parts.

First is the covenant from humans, and that is through our governments, to some extent, and through the United Nations and whatever, with the earth to stop destroying water. And that is probably the most important thing we can do. We have to stop polluting surface water and it has to be considered a crime to pollute.

We have to stop over pumping ground water. It is not sustainable. There are 23 million borewells in India alone, going 24x7, just taking that water up. It is water mining. It is not the sustainable use of that water. It is water mining. That has got to stop.

We have to retain water and bring back water into watersheds and we have to see ourselves more as a species that needs to live within nature's rules than try to bend nature to our rules with our technology and so on.

So, that is the first and that means more sustainable agriculture, that means we are not going to be able to grow [Inaudible] in the desert the way we are doing now. We are just going to have to change our way of life, much more local buying, local sourcing and so on.

The second part of the covenant would be a covenant to equality and justice around water, which would be to understand the roots of poverty in the global south and in the global north and to really address it, so that water is equitably distributed.

We call it water for all.

We believe deeply that everyone has that right.

And finally, we are talking about a kind of covenant with democracy that we feel that this should be publicly overseen, that the water, everything about it, should be public in terms of oversight, public accountability.

We have a right to know who has got hold of our water and believe me, there is nothing more fundamental in a community than some great big corporation from another country coming in and saying, "Thanks very much, thanks for taking care of that water, it is ours now."

Believe me, it doesn’t matter whether you are left or right or you live in the global north or the global south, it is something that just puts a bee under your bonnet about that notion. And people get up and say, "Excuse me." 

And when we demand this democratic accountability, people really respond to it and we are working at the United Nations to word a basic covenanteric convention that says water is a human right.

Blue Gold: World Water Wars is a thorough documentary on the water crisis by Sam Bozzo. The documentary is available on You Tube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKcf-RBHirw&feature=related