Today's Water Crisis (and tomorrow's)

I once read that this planet doesn't have a food shortage problem, it has a food distribution problem. If you've read any of my other posts you'll know that one of the distribution problems is that the majority of grains and soy grown on this planet goes to feeding livestock that we ultimately consume. We could create much more meals with the grains and soy itself than the meat we produce.

The same can be said for water. Although the inevitable water crisis hasn't achieved the same sort of social relevance yet as global warming, it is just as important and just as scary.

The world's population is expected to increase up to 50% in the next 50 years and we aren't able to offer clean drinking water to those that currently inhabit the planet. In addition, the world's clean water supply continues to become privatized at an alarming rate.

Water is expected to be seen much like oil is today, with shortages and crisis affecting our economies and our health except unlike oil there are no alternatives to clean water. Today's corporate superpowers are currently battling it out to purchase and privatize what will inevitably become our most important scarce resource.

The effects can already be seen today as one report found "you pay more for water in a slum in Manila than in a flat in London."

How did this happen? When did water become a product that can be owned and not a natural resource that is entitled to everyone? It reminds me of Monsanto, who was able to copyright and own 'life'. The blame can be shared by our complacency, citizens sold out by their governments, or corporations with unstoppable greed that have taken advantage or our laws. The blame is likely shared by everyone but the fact remains that life on this planet (ourselves included) absolutely depends on clean water- and you'll have to be able to afford this privilege.

So what are the solutions? An obvious one is for us in more developed countries to be less wasteful with our water and to invest in more sustainable technologies (capturing rainwater). We need to seriously question who will be benefiting from the privatizing of water and sooner or later we are going to have to address the population problem. We can argue our basic human rights about procreating but the science doesn't change-there are too many of us and we're using up resources faster than we can replace them. But I'll leave that for another blog post...




FLOW is a great documentary that examines this issue and offers some eye opening facts here.

You can find out more about water and the effects of privatization here.