Man, I'm thirsty. I think I'll get some water... probably grab some Montclair, good cheap stuff. Ya, actually maybe I'll treat myself to some Evian. Oh, isn't Evian great? It's so lap-able, soft and smooth on my tongue and... huh? Water scare?
What are you talking about?
Water as a scarce resource. Who would have thought?
And yet, fresh bodies of water all over the world are disappearing.
We've seen bits and pieces of this information being disseminated.
For example, the polar ice caps are melting and the Great Lakes (the largest body of fresh water in the world) are massively polluted. The oil refining process in Alberta is taking lakes worth of water that may not be replenishable.
Yet, many of the losses, especially in the 3rd world, are happening under the radar.
More children die from lack of clean drinkable water than from AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.
The 6th greatest body of fresh water in the world, Lake Chad, has been reduced to 5-10% of its original size. 9 million people rely on this water, and many of them are now leaving the area. This body of water has existed for 20,000 years, and only within the last 70 years is it being reduced with such rapidity.
In many 3rd world regions, including China and India, millions of water refugees are born. These people are forced to leave their homelands because there is not enough fresh water to drink.
And why has the world, the news world, not responded? It is a fault shared by the media and the media consumer. Because water shortage is not an attention-grabbing emotion-evoking issue. People like stories about HURRICANEs and TSUNAMIs, not a story about something as commonplace as water. Here, it seems unreal, almost impossible for us to understand... not enough drinking water? Why don't they just turn on their taps, use a Brita filter or something? But to create fresh water resources requires well-drilling equipment, which requires money - which, well you know the rest.
I've looked up some water-related NGO's
here's a list:
http://www.globalwater.org/
http://www.wateraid.org/uk/
http://www.bloodwatermission.com/
http://www.unicef.org/wes/index_links.html
here's an article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1234244.stm
Anyway, there is something that people can do. Donate. Even $5, $10, $20... and more if you can. The beauty of this is that this is simple. There's no ugly partisan issue, no human/social complications. It is a matter of digging holes...
Of course this is small-scale, but small-scale matters. Thousands of villages can be saved.
I generally don't expect more, as I am incredibly wary of a great change in public opinion about this matter. But who knows, perhaps you can inform your local politician, or perhaps you can bring it to the attention of Bono. Who knows. Anyway, I'm out.
1 comment:
Hello Lee!
It's funny that you mentioned China. Recently I read an article about how a lot places in China (and other Asian countries) are in a rush to build massive skyscrapers in order to be recognized as "world class cities". Yet they don't even provide safe drinking water for all of their people. So before they mindlessly build these massive structures or even host the Olympics, why not invest the money in improving the drinking water? Obviously, the quality of life, which has a lot to do with having access to clean water, is a better indicator of development than boring skyscrapers which we can see in every other major city in the world anyways.
It's amazing how much North Americans take water for granted. I hate to admit it, but sometimes I wonder how much water gets consumed every year by a Major League Baseball stadium, just to keep the grass looking nice. As much as we enjoy staring at natural grass fields on tv, imagine how many lives can be saved with the amount of water that is used to maintain them.
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