The Global Water Crisis

The Global Water Crisis

Excess and shortage

By 2010 about 2.5 billion people in the world are projected to lack access to safe drinking water. At least 30 per cent of the population in China, India, Mexico and the U.S is expected to face severe water stress. By 2025, the supply of water in India will be 700 cubic km per year, while the demand is expected to rise to 1,050 units. Control over this scarce and vital resource, will of course, be a source of guaranteed profits.

Vandana Shiva

 

 

 

 

 

“We’re all downstream.”

Ecologists’ Motto.  


            The has been much talk lately of the looming water crisis, it is a crisis that is picking up steam, scope, and receiving increasing attention, as more and more people become aware of its implications, consequences, environmental impact, and most alarmingly, its potential for economic gain. A year ago a paper on this subject would have been almost surprising in the facts that it would reveal. In the past month however, there has been a noticeable increase in the coverage and notice this crisis is receiving, and rightly so. “This collective resource is becoming rarer because it is being overexploited by a consumerist and pollution--generating humanity. The warning signs are clear: falling water tables, shrinking rivers and lakes, widespread pollution, creeping desertification.”These and many other signs are all factors that point us to the conclusion that something must be done about the coming, and present shortage of water that is occurring on a global scale. With falling water tables, increased use, and pollution that comes with it, there are more factors then just the simple, - if you can call the dwindling of on of the most vital resources for the life of, well life itself simple, then just the lack of fresh water that come into play. “The changes that humans have wrought are not trivial. The chemistry of groundwater is being modified on a global scale. Human actions have already caused the mean average of dissolved “additives” to increase by ten per cent. … The situation is worst in the United States, mostly because the chemical industry is at its most inventive there and farming has come to depend heavily on pesticide use, and partly because there is hardly a river left undamned or an aquifer untapped.” This extensive use of fertilisers, human over consumption, improper waste treatment, and pollution have lead, and lead to other even more direct consequences as a result of the falling water table. “Pollution leads to disease, a straight line computation that is self evident. Best guesses are that some 250 million new cases of water borne diseases occur every year, killing somewhere around 10 million people – a Canada every three years.”

Now there is another factor that is coming into play in the world water crisis, the commodification water, companies all over are becoming aware of the immense potential for profit that this crisis has for them, in the shipping, storing, and supplying of fresh water, to areas in need. Monsanto, a company that has become synonymous with the concern over corporate control of life resources, has even entered the scene of water commodification. “The business logic of sustainable development is that population growth and economic development will apply increasing pressure on the natural resource markets... These are the markets that are most relevant to us as a life sciences company committed to delivering food, health and hope to the world, and there are markets in which there are predictable sustainability challenges and therefore opportunities to create business value.” Monsanto has targeted India and Mexico as their point countries to enter into the water sales business, estimating that India and Mexico have the potential of profit in the ball park of 420 million by 2008, capitalising on ecologists predictions that, “by 2025, the supply of water in India will be 700 cubic km per year, while the demand is expected to rise to 1,050 units. Control over this scarce and vital resource, will of course, be a source of guaranteed profits.” So is the crisis looming, or already here?

            The history of humanity and its destruction of water tables and the hydrological system is not a new one that has developed only within the last few years. Russia in fact has one of the world’s best examples of what happens when water is mismanaged without concern for the surrounding environment, and a lack of research as to the environmental effects of altering said hydrological system. The Aral Sea, or rather what is now the dry basin of the Aral Sea has become one of the most famous and depressing views in the history of environmentalism;

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“as far as you can see there is nothing but sere sand, white bones of dead cattle poisoned on toxic plants, the rotting hulks of fishing vessels and barges, the pathetic detritus of a once thriving fishing culture. In the foreground are the broken timbers of what used to be a wharf; beyond that are six or seven hulls, grounded at random, pointing in no way in particular, some of them still upright, but broken, the paint reduced to small scraps of rust. Further on are humps in the sand where other hulls have been buried, and beyond that only ...

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