Water world, water wars?
View(s):Quick. What’s the cure for water on the brain? Why, it’s a tap on the head! Not so very far from the truth these days… the often-idiotic, all-embracing ice-bucket challenge still being the trending fad online and out there in the real world. With related video posts becoming more numerous than war reportage on some sites, and no real money pouring into the ALS fund, it seems like a fresh battle for the attention of bored and unprofitably employed people is being waged on traditional and social media alike.
(Some say the world will end in fire. Some say in ice.)
There may be a prophetic splash of the bucketing that’s to come in all of this water-on-the-head business. Once upon a time, the world was made of (and unmade by) bronze, copper, silver, and gold… and wars of empires spanning continents were fought over these. Then, time not out of mind yet, the most precious metals and minerals were replaced by the oily, silky smooth, viscous substance that fuels most machines and many transcontinental conflagrations: petroleum. Now, with all the global powers-that-be and their transnational minders running low on gold and liquid gold, it appears that the next great clash of cultures and civilisations will be over another rare and precious golden liquid: water.
(From what I’ve tasted of desire, I hold with those who favour fire.)
There are signs of the impending storm and stress over possible ‘water wars’ or ‘wars over water’ everywhere. Statistics about the scarcity of usable surface water in general, and strained or limited access to potable H2O water in particular, have made state corporations and corporate privateers sit up and take note. Ruthless Big Business with its eye on the main chance and its grubby hand on the bottom line is privileging access to this dwindling resource of potable and usable water; that is, privileging its value-added usage in favour of the upper echelons of world corporations. Recently a well-known multinational has attempted to compromise – or simply minimise and relativise – advocacy of hydro-rights for humans by theorising that the human right to water is invalid.
The battle lines are being drawn across bodies of water everywhere. Abroad, it is becoming increasingly evident that there is more conflict than cooperation over transnational bodies of fresh water. In our own region, the clash over the great river Ganges – between India and Bangladesh – is a flashpoint, with this precious source of life and health being increasingly depleted and dirtied. Farther afield, greedy global-corporate eyes have set their sights on the Guarani Aquifer, with a 40,000 square-kilometre volume that is the mainstay of four Mercosur countries: Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay. And closer home, in the Middle East, the potential for a new type of terrorism is heating up its prospects in the water-starved Arabian Peninsula, where it is estimated that people of the region will need to consume 200 % of the water at their disposal.
(But if it had to perish twice…)
At home, the situation is no less dire. As we saw only too recently, water on the head – or the mind – became an issue only when Colombians or suburb-dwellers were compelled to undergo an enforced shortage (ostensibly for repairs to pipelines, but possibly aggravated by alleged water-themed parks being prepared for the entertainment of elites). All this while – at the time – a reported 2,000,000 people (a tenth of our population) across 8 districts – struggled to meet their water needs under severe drought conditions. And the apathy and ignorance of conspicuous consumption in the capital is only minutely ameliorated by the awareness-raising campaigns mounted and thrust into the public’s imagination by socially-conscious activists and lobby groups.
(I think I know enough of hate to say…)
A crueller development driven by the money motive has been the privatisation of water. Despite protests from some governments and virtually all of the demographics concerned, this trend has continued to gain ground globally from large-scale privatisation in Latin America to lesser initiatives – aided and abetted by ‘world’ and ‘international’ apex bodies and authorities – in East Asia. Demonstrably without exception, the privatisation of water has resulted in a flood of ethical and medical concerns in the countries where national governments have colluded with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to, in effect, cut off their respective nations’ poor from access to potable water. Dysentery, cholera, and other gastrointestinal diseases have ensued, to say nothing of concerns over pricing and availability.
(That for destruction ice is also great…)
Where will it all end? Will water wars end the world economy as we know it? Or can and shall valiant rearguard actions being set in motion by human-rights groups stem the flow and turn the tide? Water scarcity is a problem that won’t go away anytime soon. Add to socio-political woes the ecological issues of climate change and you will see we’re sitting on a cauldron of steaming issues that could impact the human race as know it. Puts ice-bucket challenges in proper perspective, doesn’t it? And makes you think twice about buying bottled water. Trust you will also keep in mind that the same people on the periphery who get washed out by floods are the same peasant-farmers who toil through droughts and are the same poor folks who (one day soon, if you and I remain complacent and ignorant and apathetic) are in danger of being denied the human right to water for life.
(And would suffice!)
So forget gold and oil and bonds and stocks. With the world water situation as it is, and worsening every day, it won’t be long before corporate-backed governments go to war over our planet’s increasingly most-precious resource. If you want to stem the tide, sign the petition that just might prevent the privatisation of water by corporates, while there’s still time left.