Africana Plus
No57 November 2003.5
2003
International Year of Fresh Water
The General
Assembly of the United Nations declared 2003 as International
Year of Fresh Water. A resolution was proposed by the Government
of Tajikistan and won the support of 148 countries. It commits
governments, the United Nations and all other agencies to turn
this to good account by improving awareness of the importance in
sustained utilisation, management and protection of fresh water.
It is therefore another way of making all countries aware of
environmental protection. As human beings and as Christians, we
are all responsible for our planet. This International Year
should deeply affect Quebec, where water is one of its assets.
The General
Assembly of the United Nations has declared 2003 as International
Year of Fresh Water. The timing could not be better. At the
Millennium Summit in 2000, world leaders agreed to reduce by half
the proportion of individuals who do not have access to drinking
water or who do not have the means of supply by 2015 at the
latest. At the World Summit on Sustainable Development, which was
held in Johannesburg this year, a matching objective was fixed:
in the same time scale, reduce by half the proportion of people
who have no access to basic water purification.
"If we do not
reach these objectives, the consequences will be serious. Fatal
illnesses will continue to wreak havoc and spread; the global
environment is deteriorating and food safety will be put in
danger with the risk of instability that all this entails. And if
problems linked to water are acute in the developing world, the
developed countries are not necessarily immune from them. We need
to better manage the water resources of the planet. We need
to irrigate more efficiently, make agricultural and industrial
activity less polluted and invest more in the infrastructures and
services that use water. We also need to free women and girls
from the burden of a long daily trek to fetch water. It would be
much better for them to spend all this time and energy educating
themselves and improving conditions of life for themselves, their
families and their communities. On the occasion of the
International Year of Fresh Water, the world has to gather
together, become aware of the problems, and find new ideas, new
principles of action to support sharing, partnerships and
peaceful interchange. Let us join forces and turn our knowledge
and technology to good account by doing all we can to protect the
precious sources of the planet's fresh water that is
indispensable for our survival and sustainable development in the
21st century. "This is the message that Kofi Annan, the
Secretary General of the United Nations gave for 2003.
Let us take a
typical instance from the Horn or Africa, a real textbook case.
The women of Dere Kiltu, some 150 kilometers from the Ethiopian
capital, have to walk eight or nine hours to fill an earthenware
pitcher with water from the Awash or Kaleta rivers and return to
their village. "They leave early in the morning and come
back in the afternoon", said an80 year-old farmer, Ahmed
Ibrahim, " in the meantime, the children go hungry."
According to the United Nations, an Ethiopian consumes on average
a little more than one liter of water daily, far from the 50
liters recommended for drinking, cooking and hygiene. Ethiopia is
the least advanced country in the world for water: 76% of the
population have no access to drinking water - the rate is 40% in
sub-Saharan Africa and 20%worldwide. In addition, 85% of
Ethiopians have no proper purification of wastewater, just like
40% of the world population. Consequently along with half the
planet, many Ethiopians suffer from illnesses linked to the poor
quality of water, one of the principal causes of high infant
mortality.
In the years to
come, "blue gold" will be a rare commodity.
According to specialists, every human being will see access to
drinking water diminish by one third from now until 2025. No
continent will be spared. Who is to blame? People. But is it
really necessary to point it out? For years, disastrous
management of this vital resource has worsened its availability.
Throughout the 20th century, the population has tripled whereas
at the same time, instead of keeping to the same rate, the
consumption of drinking water has multiplied by six. Add to this
the intolerable disparity of the different geographical sectors.
Although it is indispensable for life, fresh water is not equally
distributed on the surface of the earth. In fact 70% of the
earth's surface is covered by water; 97.5% is salt water; 2.5% of
there mainder is fresh water, of which nearly three quarters is
frozen. This leaves 1% of water resources for human consumption.
However, in most regions, there is enough water to satisfy the
basic needs of everyone, which does not mean that the water
resources should not be carefully managed and care taken not to
waste them. Almost 70 % of freshwater is used for agricultural
needs. However, due to inefficient irrigation systems, in
particular in developing countries, 60% of this water evaporates
or is poured back into rivers or underground streams. Water
consumption for irrigation has increased by 60% since 1960.
Almost 40% of the world's population now live in parts of the
worlds where they will experience moderate or serious shortages
in water supply.
Today, nearly 1.2
thousand million people throughout the world do not have access
to drinking water of sufficient quality at an affordable price
and 2.4 thousand million people, say over a third of the
population of the world, have no access to adequate purification
facilities. More than 3 million people, mostly in developing
countries, die every year as a result of illnesses contracted due
to inadequate sanitary conditions and dirty water. "The
problems of water supply impose extremely difficult problems to
more than a thousand million members of the human family",
declared Mr Koffi Annan, the General Secretary of the United
Nations. "If this present trend continues, it is very likely
that water will become an increasing source of tension and fierce
competition among nations. However, it can also become a catalyst
for cooperation." As Koichiro Matsuura, the Director General
of UNESCO, has said, "Water can be a factor for peace rather
than conflict. UNESCO is applying itself completely so that this
century will be a century of 'water peace' rather than of 'water
war'. By developing efficient and ethical management
principles and methods for this resource, while respecting the
ecosystems linked to it, we are taking steps towards achieving
sustainable development. "Returning to our typical case from
Ethiopia: if Dahaba does not go to fetch water in the Awash River
close by, it is because it is in Afar territory, hereditary
enemies of the Somalis! "This is the front line,"
explained Hajji Samod Barre. "The boys who bring their
animals to water at the river don't put their Kalashnikovs down.
Before now, there were places where neither Afar nor Somali would
bring their cattle, but now everyone goes there. To get pasture,
you have to kill someone, or it is you that will die. "Drought
has worsened inter-tribal tension. In one year it has caused at
least 200 deaths on both sides.
At the moment, the
estimates for world expenditure for the provision of drinking
water and water purification services amount to 30 billion
dollars annually. To reach the millennium development objective
in water and purification, it is estimated that 14 to 30 billion
dollar more will be required annually. In the future, water
shortages will be a problem for development. In fact, in the
course of the 20th century, water consumption increased twice as
quickly as the population. It has resulted in an over-exploitation
of underground streams and a drop in the level of groundwater as
well as some rivers, such as the Colorado River in the United
States and the Yellow River in China. They often dry up even
before they reach the sea. A certain number of regions like the
Middle East, North Africa and South Asia are already experiencing
chronic water shortages. Four people out of ten live in parts of
the world subject to water shortages.
What about
drinking water in Western countries and more especially Canada
and Quebec? According to the latest surveys, the people of
Quebec finish a good second on the world prize list with an
average consumption of 400litres a day (l/d), just behind the
Americans who are slightly ahead at 425l/d. So Quebec exceeds and
inflates the Canadian average, which is 350 l/d, decidedly in
excess of the United Kingdom (200 l/d) and France (150 l/d).
Taken as a whole, residences in Quebec demand an annual
production of 1.7thousand million cubic meters of treated water,
of which 1.4 thousand million come from surface water,
principally the Saint Lawrence and its tributaries, along with
236 million from underground streams. Only 1 % of all this water
is for human consumption. In Quebec, apart from certain days in a
heat wave, the occasions for worrying about the supply and the
quality of drinking water are rare. The territory of Quebec has 3%
of the renewable fresh water resources of the planet in reserve.
(Canada,5.6%.) That represents 135,000 m3 per head per year (500m3
per year represents the critical threshold for survival), say
eight times more than the average volume per inhabitant of the
planet and 13 times more than that of the United States. If
Canada is an absolute mine of blue gold, drinking water
increasingly appears to be a commodity for commerce and profit.
Commercialisation of immense reservoirs of water, as much
surface as underground, is mind-boggling.
If agreement
exists on the imperative to better mange consumption of the
world's fresh water resources, there are nonetheless differing
points of view on the policies to adopt on how to reach those
arrangements. For some, access to drinking water and basic
purification services are a human right for which governments
must take the required steps. For others, water is an economic
commodity that should be provided on the basis of cost-effectiveness.
This particularly implies options taking account of market forces
and the possibility of privatising certain aspects of water
provision. Many governments have opted for a combination of the
two. However, economic interest alone should not dictate the
course to follow. A proper privatisation requires a clearly
defined legislative framework beforehand, allowing the government
to guarantee that private enterprise will in practice defend the
public interest. It must always ensure that the efforts of the
private sector to put sure and effective services in place will
not be to the detriment of poor or low-income families. In the
countries of the Third World, for example, millions of
impoverished people are deprived of drinking water because they
cannot pay their bills. The example of Ghana is very enlightening.
In three years, there has been an increase of 300% in the cost of
water. This is to make the system more attractive to outside
investors. As a result of this price rise, several Ghanaians have
gone back to drinking from polluted ponds, risking disease or
even death. Therefore there is the real risk that privatisation
is a threat to the common good in that water and access to it
should be made available to all.
In October 2002,
Pope John-Paul II sent a message to Mr. Jacques Diouf, Director
General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation,
on the subject of water as a source of food safety. Here is an
extract: "Biblical wisdom reminds us that we must not
abandon "the fountain of living water" in order to
"dig cisterns, leaky cisterns that hold no water"(Jer.2:
13). Here we can perhaps take a warning on our own present
circumstances. In other words, we are reminded that technical
solutions, no matter how well developed, are no help when they do
not take account of the totality of the human person. The human
person, in spiritual and material dimensions, is the touchstone
of all human rights and therefore must be the criterion of value
for all programmes and all policies. Satisfactory levels of
development in all geographical regions will only be legitimately
and respectfully guaranteed if access to water is considered as a
personal and public right. To achieve this, international
politics should bring to bear a new awareness of the inestimable
value of water resources, which are often non-renewable and
should not become an entitlement reserved to a handful of people,
as they are the common good of all humankind. By their very
nature, they should be poured impartially into the hands of all,
according to the rule of justice, inseparable from charity."
Let us never
forget, as in the song of Gilles Vigneault, "the spring does
not sell its water." There are many who insist on the
official adoption of aright to water. Human dignity demands it.
Water is indeed an essential for life. Without water, life is
threatened, and that can lead to death. The right to water is
therefore indisputable.
Michel Fortin, M.Afr.