Water
See also Water on Wednesday-Night.com
Whenever the topic of water comes up, we are reminded of the occasion in early 1991 when Wednesday Night hosted a Spicer Commission “Town Hall”. The opening question decreed by the established format was what did people in the room think would be the most important issue of the 21 st century. From a dark corner of the room came one word “Water”. As the facilitator vainly searched for water in her lists of probable answers, the general agreement on the importance of water quickly morphed into a debate about what percentage of the world’s water resources was in Canada.
Since then, issues related to water, especially its non-renewable nature, reappear with increasing frequency on the Wednesday Night agenda, and the debate over whether water should be “commoditized” often rages.
April 24, 2008
(RCI) TORONTO: ‘WATER WARS’ LOOM
Experts speaking at a conference on water warn that “water wars” are impending, particularly over water from the Great Lakes. Linda Mortsch of Environment Canada noted that the southwestern U.S. states are already worried about dwindling water supplies and the impacts of climate change are worsening their problem. Earlier this month, Ohio Lt.-Gov. Lee Fisher created a stir when he predicted that the Great Lakes region may be less than a decade away from selling water to other U.S. states in need. Mrs. Mortsch commented that many Americans think such an eventuality is inevitable. Milton Clark, a senior health and science adviser for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, remarked: “You will see water wars coming in every way, shape or form.” Mr. Clark added that there are leading American politicians who have insisted that the Great Lakes belong to everyone and that water should be nationalized. Ontario and Quebec have signed an agreement that would ban bulk transfers of Great Lakes water to other jurisdictions and are hoping that the eight Great Lakes states and the U.S. Congress will agree to a similar accord.
April 10 2008
UN’s climate panel predicts water woes
The world’s southern hemisphere is likely to suffer more droughts in coming decades while the northern hemisphere probably will see more floods, the United Nations’ climate panel predicts in a new report. The report, which was presented at a meeting in Budapest, said there likely will be less water in the south for both drinking and agriculture. Chicago Tribune/Associated Press (free registration) (4/10)
Spring 2008
The Council of Canadians on water
Water is vital to people’s health and livelihoods. In Canada, there is no national strategy to address urgent water issues and no federal leadership to conserve and protect our water. The Federal Water Policy is over 20 years old and badly outdated. Our freshwater faces crises including contamination, shortages and pressure to export water to the United States through pipelines and diversions. 2008 General Water Presentation:
March 22
(Reuters) World Water Day: 1.5 million children’s lives could be saved if provided with proper water and sanitation
Commodity Online World Water Day today: 1.1 bn lack access to water
As the world celebrates World Water Day on Saturday, nearly 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water, it requires 100 tonnes of water to produce one ton of grain and food security is under threat.
The UN, which has been celebrating World Water Day for last fifteen years, reported this week that the world’s glaciers are melting at “an alarming rate.” Like reservoirs, glaciers store water and then release it at predictable rates, around which humans have formed communities and built economies.
Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program recently said, “Millions if not billions of people depend directly or indirectly on these natural water storage facilities for drinking water, agriculture, industry, and power generation during key parts of the year.”
(Pakistan Daily Times) World Water Day: Water shortage looms high
* World Bank report says Pakistan in dire need of new reservoirs
* More water resources required to meet electricity demand
* New dams required to fulfil industrial demands
* Data say only 55pc population has access to drinking water
We offer the piece below for entertainment - it’s well written - but also as a bitter contrast of two separate worlds. Unfortunately, it is based on a false premise. Water is a finite and precious resource. A clever and amusingly devastating restaurant review followed the diatribe on bottled water.
Water - not a finite resource?
If you’re George Monbiot, you’ll already know this … The rest of you will just have to make an ill-informed guess. Your starter for 10: since the beginning of the industrial revolution, how much water has mankind irreplaceably used up? Is it one gallon per head, 100 gallons per head or 1,000 gallons per head? And how much of that figure do you think is due to bottled water? The answer is, of course, none. All the water that ever was, every ice-age glacier, every princess’s tear, every rill, gill, brook, beck and burn, each and every drop of monsoon, all scattered showers, every old man’s prostate dribble and teenager’s salivay snog is still here. The world is as soggy as the Garden of Eden.
Water is not a finite resource; it isn’t a vanishing commodity; if you leave the tap running, it doesn’t vanish for ever. Don’t let anybody tell you that you’re wasting it: you can’t. You may be wasting the energy that brought it to you, but you’re not clever enough or powerful enough to vanish. Water is constantly on the move. It flies in the night in the howling storm, burrows through the minutest crease in the impregnable rock, rests behind the skirting board, meditates brightly on dawn spiders’ webs. The cupidity and caprice of water is one of the central themes of mankind’s saga. We have to go with the flow.
There’s an awful lot being said about water in restaurants at the moment. Green, publicity-aware restaurateurs and chefs are proclaiming their welcome for customers who demand tap water. In New York, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor, has called for a boycott of bottled water. The most evil thing you can be caught holding is a cold bottle of Fiji water. Actually, Fiji is exceptionally good: very soft, very round. It makes no difference to the atmosphere what’s in the bottle. It’s the trip that murders the polar bears. But there is an assumption that says wine or tequila or rum or Mexican chili sauce is worth the flight. But water is, well, just water.
Fiji has as much right to exploit a renewable natural resource for the good of its inhabitants as the French have to export their wine, which, when all’s said and done, is mostly water anyway… New York has very good tap water. London[’s water] is hard, limey and tastes like it’s been used to rinse false teeth. You’re mad if you drink bottled water in the Highlands, but you’re equally mad if you drink tap water in Paris.
Water has become the toast of self-righteousness. This is stupid, lazy, T-shirt-slogan morality. Bottled water is ethically, intellectually and environmentally indistinguishable from bottled anything else. There is a real world problem with water: it’s the indiscriminate drilling of wells in the Punjab, the salination of central Asia, the contamination of the water table under the Middle East, the cholera and dysentery in sub-Saharan Africa, the evaporation of Lake Chad, the drought in central-southern Australia and the fact that 1.1 billion people can’t get a clean, clear drink. So do you imagine the sort of ethically filtered aqua you sip matters a drip to a woman who has to walk four miles to fill a bucket with brown amoebic sludge?
Aral, the dying sea
Once the world’s fourth largest lake, the mighty Aral Sea is now in it’s death throws. Starved of it’s lifeblood of the waters of the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya rivers, the sea has been shrinking for the last 40 years.
From the 1930s, the former Soviet Union started building large scale diversion canals to irrigate vast cotton fields in a grand plan to make cotton a great export earner. This was achieved, and even today Uzbekistan is still a large exporter of cotton. But the cost in ecological and human terms have been astronomical.
April 2007
The supply of potable water is declining. While climate change plays a part in affecting global water supplies, it is the pressure of increasing population growth that is at the root of the problem. Growing urban water supply and sanitation needs, particularly in lower- and middle-income countries, face increasing competition with other sectors. Rising incomes in other portions of the world population fuel demand for manufactured goods and environmental services and amenities, all of which require water. [see: 2nd UN World Water Development Report]
March 8 2007
A passionate fighter Maude Barlow
by Ann Farrell | January 2, 2003
The global water crisis is undeniable The Council of Canadians (COC) told Prime Minister Stephen Harper in a letter sent on the occasion of the 2007 International Women’s Day. The letter re-iterates what COC’s national volunteer chairman Maude Barlow wrote nearly 20 years ago in her book Parcel of Rogues:
… They (environmentalists) also point out that the Athabasca venture alone will dump tons of dioxin into the river every day. The industry is responsible for half the waste water dumped in Canada every year.
The 60-year-old Barlow believes the “commodifying” of water – selling it in bottles, for instance – has been driven by corporate interests. She said this started with the privatization of municipal water services and was encouraged when water was declared a commodity or a good in trade agreements. It was talked about as a good rather than as a need, and with the founding of the World Water Council in 1997, the commodification of water was launched.
March 16 2006
State of the World’s Water Resources
March 10 2006
NAIROBI, Kenya — Mismanagement, limited resources and environmental damage have combined to deny 1.1 billion people access to safe water, a U.N. report said Thursday.
Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the hardest-hit areas, where ecological degradation, poor management and a burgeoning population have led to water shortages exacerbating poverty, disease and drought, the report said.
Scientists Say Risk of Water Wars Is Rising
August 24, 2004 12:00 AM - Patrick McLoughlin, Reuters
The risk of wars being fought over water is rising because of explosive global population growth and widespread complacency, scientists said recently.
April 26, 2001
Shrinking African Lake Offers Lesson on Finite Resources
Lake Chad, once one of Africa’s largest freshwater lakes, has shrunk dramatically in the last 40 years.
The situation is a “domino effect,” the researchers say. Overgrazing reduces vegetation, which in turn reduces the ecosystem’s ability to recycle moisture back into the atmosphere. That contributes to the retreat of the monsoons. The consequent drought conditions have triggered a huge increase in the use of lake water for irrigation, while the Sahara has gradually edged southward.
Lake Chad is not likely to be replenished to its former size in our lifetime, the researchers say.
The lake’s decline and the climate change have had an enormous impact on the 9 million farmers, fishermen, and herders living in the region. They have experienced crop failures, dying livestock, collapsed fisheries, and the continuous draining of the lake.
