Back in the days when I used to fancy being a
"pundit," after I had left gainful employment, I spent some of my idle hours writing columns for the Corner Brook Western Star as a
member of the "Community Editorial Board," until
several writer friends complained about my providing free content to a local
newspaper. Vanity chastened, I stopped writing them and stuck to Letters to the
Editor after that. Every now and then something comes up that makes me remember
my "Cassandra" moments and I have had a few of them. Better I should watch World Wide Wrestling. Perhaps it will be coming to us from the former Kennedy Center in its MAGA incarnation.
An item on CBC recalled one to me this morning:
Trump's musings on 'very
large faucet' in Canada part of looming water crisis, say
researchers by Joel Dryden, Calgary CBC News · Posted: Feb 18,
2025
Here is what I wrote in Honour of World Water Day in
2003 on April 15. The image was fuzzy, so I have extracted the text, but vanity compels me to keep the byline.
Thoughts on Plumbing
Every time I shower, I am awed by the convenience, and
pleasure, of standing under hot, clean water. For most people in the world,
this is an unimaginable luxury.
1 remember “hard times” in New York City when strain on the
water system led to ad campaigns that urged: “Save water! Shower with a friend!
” Living five years in California, I learned how precious water is, and how
longingly Californians gaze northward at our abundant water. Recently, a young
friend working on a project in Ethiopia told us his weekly water ration for
hygiene purposes: three litres!
In March, UNESCO released a forecast about a projected
decline in water quality, worldwide. UNESCO predicts that “the average supply
of fresh water per person across the planet is set to plunge by a third over
die next 20 years. Seven billion people across 60 countries will face water
shortages within 50 years. .Population growth, climate change, environmental
degradation and water wastage are likely to cause problems even for wealthy
nations.”
The document, described as “the most comprehensive
assessment of the state of the world’s fresh-water supplies,” ranks 122
countries based on their water quality . Finland, Canada, and New Zealand are
at the top. The report blamed political inertia at almost every level and
condemned governments around the world for ignoring the threat to the earth’s
fresh water, despite scientific evidence of the crisis.
More than 2.2 million people die annually from diseases
related to contaminated drinking water and poor sanitation. It would be
interesting to compare this with the number of people killed in proven
terrorist attacks, but I could not locate such figures. If they were as high as
10,000 it would be less than 1% of the
2.2 million cited above.
The day George W. Bush launched his war on Iraq. 24.000
delegates from 182 countries gathered to consider the UNESCO report at the
third World Water Forum, held - ironically - in Kyoto. That day, Olivier
Bommelaer, of the Seine-Normandy River Basin Organization, told delegates “The
world spends 40 times more for petroleum each year than it invests in water,
sanitation infrastructure and maintenance.” There was little media coverage of
this massive gathering.
The next morning, local CBC radio was preempted so we could
hear inane interviews about gas masks, with journalists in Kuwait. How sad it
is that such an important meeting attracted so little attention. Unfortunately,
such events are simply not as “sexy” as planes flying into skyscrapers and
missiles thudding into bunkers. Truly these latter tragedies are real, but when
measured against the tragedy of world starvation and disease, some perspective
is needed. Sewage problems don’t make exciting footage on CNN, but they will
probably kill far more people in the long run. They have already done so in
Iraq.
Gordon Young, the coordinà tor of the UN’s World Water
Assessment Program, told the forum that “spending $50 billion or $100 billion
annually on water would solve many of the world’s health problems.” By
comparison, some “$30 billion is spent each year on activities, such as golf,
that consume a huge amount of water.” Global military spending is in the
$9(X)US billion range; about $400 billion of that is spent by the United
States.
After the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government requested $40
billion for the war against Afghanistan. President Bush has just requested $75
billion to pursue the war in Iraq for one month.
Certain Western leaders claimed the 9/11 attack to be an
assault on “civilization,” but what kind of “civilization” are we, to live in
comfort, while 600 million are homeless , 800 million chronically malnourished,
and 1 billion have no access to clean water?
We, “the civilized”, represent perhaps 10% of the world’s population,
but consume about 90% of its resources. U.S. trade and foreign policy seem
founded on maintaining that 10% - 90% split.
In his fascinating book “Among the Believers”, V.S. Naipul observed that
many of the “fundamentalists” he interviewed across the Muslim world resented
“the West” more because of its profligate consumption patterns and environmental degradation, than
for its religious beliefs.
There are, indeed, environment disasters in the developing
world, but the resources to fix them are scarcer than ours, and many have come
from “civilization”. Remember Bhophal?
The Bush administration and its supporters seem determined
to undermine the future of United Nations because the Security Council has
refused their “big stick” approach to global security. The work of die Security
Council represents only a fraction of the UN’s work - work such as this assessment of the world’s water and planning
solutions.
If we think global security is threatened now. imagine the
“War for Water”.
The recent outbreak of SARS, which may have its origins in
an area where agricultural sanitation may be less than desirable, should be
another reminder that there are “things” out there as scary as Osama and
Saddam. The diversion of so much of the world’s wealth toward “the War on
Terror” and away from solving large global problems, is disproportionate,
immoral; and counterproductive.
Back in the shower, I think of Tolstoy’s question, “What
then must we do?” On the global level, it is daunting. However, the somewhat ponderous paragraph on
“Local Action” in the Water Forum’s Preliminary Statement offers hope:
“There is an increasing number of initiatives worldwide
where society’s goals are met to prevent
pollution while the services of ecosystems are protected for example through
watershed protectlion.
These actions, the majority of which are undertaken at the
local-level, deserve wider-scale application.”
We can start by requiring our elected officials to protect
our own watershed.
(Elinor Benjamin is a resident Corner Brook and a member of
The Western Star’s Community Editorial Board.)
