Weeping for Water

 

By Garda Ghista

 

 

I.   Introduction – The Big Picture

 

Human beings, all life forms, cannot sustain themselves without water. On our planet 97.4 percent of the water is salt water, while a mere 2.5 percent is fresh water.  Of the 2.5 percent fresh water, 70 perent has been locked up in ice sheets and glaciers in the Antarctic, Greenland and in mountain ranges in various countries.  Less than 30 percent is stored as groundwater in aquifers. A fraction of the freshwater sources are available in rivers and lakes, with other storage sources being the soil, plants and atmosphere.  Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar predicted that water scarcity would be the biggest problem facing the earth’s population in the very near future.

 

 Agriculture is the highest water user, with 69 percent of global water supplies going to support crops, 21 percent for industrial purposes and 10 percent for residential use. 

 

To solve present water shortage problems, hydrologic engineers are inventing mega solutions in the form of mega projects, because the problems are also mega-size.  For example, the Yellow River in China, the Colorado and Rio Grande Rivers shared by the United State and Mexico, the Indus River in Pakistan and the Nile River running through Eastern Africa have all run dry in recent years for periods of time.  Farmers are pumping out 160 million acre-feet of water per year from underground water sources than is being replenished by rains and rivers.  As a result, underground water tables are crashing.[1]  According to the World Bank, future water scarcity will cut world food production by 350 million tons a year, with disastrous human consequences. 

 

More than one billion people around the world have no access to clean, safe drinking water.[2] Delegates at the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg in 2002 committed themselves to halving that figure by 2015.[3]  They also promised to provide modern sanitation to more than a billion of the world’s people who presently have nothing. It means that in addition to providing drinking water, countries will also need to provide water for flushing toilets and emptying sewer pipes.  Countries already reaching crisis mode, such as China, India, Pakistan and Egypt, are already working frantically to find solutions. Invariably, the hydrological consultants of these countries turn to mega solutions as the only solutions.  But there are other scientists and geologists who maintain that big and centralized is not the solution to the growing water crisis.  For one thing, the already planned mega solutions will surely lead to water wars between countries.  The Danube, Rhine, Congo, Nile, Niger and Zambezi Rivers all run each through nine or more countries.  Most of these countries have not signed treaties governing distribution of those river waters.  Already extreme tensions over water distribution exist between India and Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, and between Israel, Syria and Turkey.  In addition to the distribution issue, the unforeseen rapid global warming is causing changed rainfall patterns, glacial melting way beyond the expectations of even climatologists, which is causing droughts and floods that only further aggravate tensions between countries.

 

Peter Gleick, of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development Environment and Security in Oakland, California, believes that mega solutions are not the answer to water shortage.  While agreeing that the mega-water projects have provided water to millions of people and thousands of acres of agricultural land, he says they have simultaneously reaped huge social, economic and environmental costs.  Invariably huge mega water projects involve the displacement, impoverishment and neo-refugee status of tens of thousands to millions of human beings.[4]  Those people lose not only their homes and communities; they lose their jobs, which often were related to the water on whose riparian shores they lived.  They lose fisheries, flood irrigation, precious silt, and invaluable ecological services that rivers bestow in silence on their floodplains.

 

Re-plumbing major rivers brings on a whole new set of environmental problems.  Large dams built over the past century have caused a huge decline in freshwater fish. The transfer of water from one river basin to another is causing ecological destabilization, via shifting predator species and diseases from one area to another.  The Aral Sea is a case in point, as Russian engineers directed the flow of two major rivers away from the Sea and onto a vast landscape of agricultural fields. The result today is that the Aral Sea is now a dried up, salt-encrusted basin amidst a toxic jungle.[5]

 

According to Gleick, what we need now is a “soft path” to either complement or replace mega water projects.  Lower-cost and localized community-scale systems along with efficient engineering and putting a premium on biodiversity and ecosystems must be an integral part of future water projects.  The water crisis, says Gleick, is not about water shortage. It is about water management and water distribution.  Economically speaking, it is not a supply-side problem. Rather, it is a demand-side problem, with the bottom line being that present water management is perhaps the worst in the earth’s history, which means there is nearly unlimited scope for improvement.  We use water in many ways. Rivers and canals provide routes for transport of goods. Falling water provides power for residential and commercial purposes. Desalination, recycling and reutilization of wastewater, and rainwater harvesting are additional ways for water use.  Without water, we cannot survive.  Water is the catalyst for all civilizations since the beginning of time. Hence, with the present shortages and rapid depletion of existing sources, it can be considered the greatest crisis affecting our planet. 

 

II.   The Issues

 

Availability of Water

In 1995, then World Bank vice president Ismail Serageldin said , “If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water.” His words are coming true, as countries like China, India, Israel, Bolivia, Canada, Mexico, Ghana and even the United States report severe water shortages.[6] When studying the availability of water, one has to take into account not just its present quantity but the population requiring that water. One also has to determine whether the water is fit for human consumption or whether it has been contaminated by arsenic, depleted uranium or other minerals and man-made chemicals.  Furthermore, by modestly or radically changing our original ecosystem, including the water systems, we risk not only the extinction of biodiversity but we threaten our own survival. Looking upon water as a commodity to be used for profit has had disastrous consequences all over the globe.  The correct approach must be to utilize water within its natural habitat, and to retain all biodiversity surrounding that water, as it developed there for a reason.  We need to understand how, for example, mangroves that once grew in thick forests along the Bay of Bengal were removed to set up shrimp fisheries for the profit of a few. We need to understand the ramifications of the removal of wetlands along the coast of New Orleans for commercial development. Both the wetlands and the mangrove forests served as a natural protection from hurricanes and cyclones in both the Bay of Bengal and the Gulf Coast. Along the coast of Tamil Nadu during the tsunami, certain portions along the coast were covered with mangrove trees.  The villages behind those forests suffered no loss of life because the mangroves caught and held the brunt of the tidal wave. 

 

Over one billion people lack access to safe water and over two billion in the world live without proper sanitation.  Water-related diseases cause five million deaths annually.[7]  Water is the key to life.  Human beings cannot survive without water.  Without easy availability of water, people are deprived of the chance to maintain good hygiene habits. In addition, health problems due to unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation abound.  

 

Conflicts in the world  – wars between nations – are destroying vital and scarce water supplies. In both Iraq and Afghanistan the river waters have been contaminated with depleted uranium, and the previously extant sewer system has been destroyed by bombs.  Countries like Angola and Democratic Republic of Congo also bear testimony to how precious water resources are destroyed by war.  In desert areas such as the Middle Eastern countries, it is easy to envision that future wars will be fought only over highly scarce water resources.  

 

Table 1a and 1b shows the water availability in five countries. Numbers are given for total internal renewable water, groundwater produced internally, surface water produced internally, overlap surface and groundwater, water resources, water resources total renewable, dependency, land area of the country, total population of the country in the year 2000, and population density in the year 2000. 

 

 

Table 1a

 

 

Table 1b

Country	Water resources: total renewable per capita (m3/capita/year)	Dependency ratio (%)	Land area (km2)	Population in 2000 (1000 inh)	Population density in 2000 (inh/km2)
China	2259	1	9327420	1262437	137
Bangladesh	8809	91	130170	137439	1056
India	1880	34	2973190	1006937	339
Egypt	859	97	995450	67884	68
Libya	113	0	1757540	5290	3

 

 

Resolutions Regarding Water

At the Millennium Summit, the Development Goals agreed upon by the United Nations General Assembly included the proposal to “halve, by the year 2015, the proportion of people who are unable to reach or to afford safe drinking water.”[8]  The Development Goals were extended at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002. Then in March 2003 the Third World Water Forum took place in Japan, where commitments were made to increase the minimum requirements of water both for health, sanitation and food production.[9]  Engineering consultants advised the delegates that an investment of more than $200 billion was required to finance the huge water infrastructures required in the near future – required to provide all people with water.  But according to Peter Gleick, this is not true, because the figure of $200 billion is based on the assumption that mega water projects and re-plumbing of entire countries are the only viable solutions to the water crisis. 

 

Water and Gender

Millions of women in developing countries spend several hours a day walking long distances to fetch a few buckets of water – for drinking, bathing and cleaning, to water their vegetables and give to their livestock.  It is a great injustice that women are condemned to struggle for something as basic as water, when they could be utilizing those hours to develop themselves intellectually.   It is logical to think that in the ideal scenario, women, who have the most at stake without water and who stand the most to benefit in having water piped to their homes, should be an integrated part of the management and maintenance of water resources.

 

Another major problem is refugees – migrating populations looking for new homes – and water. On reaching a new locality, these homeless people are simply not included in the local water systems.

 

Re-plumbing Countries

As of 1998 there were 47,655 large dams and 800,000 smaller dams worldwide. A large dam is defined as having a height of more than 15 meters and holding more than three million cubic meters of water in its reservoir.[10]  While dams originated around 5,000 years ago, most of today’s dams were built in the 1960s and 1980s. In 1999 about 300 dams over 60 meters in height were under construction.[11] According to hydrological experts, many more dams will be required to meet burgeoning populations.  Here we need to examine the ecological side effects of dam building, along with the use of water in different areas, and whether water is used in a frugal, efficient manner, which could lead to supplies lasting for decades into the future instead of the current crisis facing the world.

 

According to Fred Pearce, the real danger in dams is that (1) they trigger earthquakes due to the weight of water in their reservoirs; it creates small geological shifts along fault lines in the vicinity of the dam.  An example is the Koyna Dam near t1:place w:st="on">Mumbai, India. When its reservoir was first filled, the action caused an earthquake measuring 6.3, which broke the dam and killed 177 people.[12]  Another example is the Machu Dam in Gujarat, India. The dam collapsed during an earthquake and drowned 2,000 people in the adjacent town of Morvi. (2) some dams are constructed directly on fault lines or adjacent to them.  The Tehri Dam in India is an example.  

 

Climate Change

Water resources are a direct result of climate, which creates the hydrological cycle. Climate change is a natural, ongoing process. If the climate changes in an unnatural way, due to external forces such as, for example, an increase of carbon dioxide or methane gas in the atmosphere, it can have moderate to severe repercussions on our water supplies.  Presently we are seeing that due to carbon dioxide emissions, the atmospheric temperatures surrounding the earth are increasing.  The amount of increase is minimal. However, just a few degrees’ increase can lead to disastrous climatic consequences.[13]  These resulting climatic changes will lead to radical changes in our water supplies.  Atmospheric scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that the global warming is expected to increase between 1990 and 2100 by from 1.4’C to 5.8’C. This projection is without precedent in the last 10,000 years.[14]  The rise in ocean level during this period is projected at from 0.09 to 0.88 meters.  The 2003 UNESCO Report on Natural Water Systems explains that this will lead to moderate to severe changes in the global hydrological cycle. In fact, the warming of the earth’s atmosphere is occurring far more rapidly than was predicted, forcing scientists to go back to the drawing table to revise their calculations. Changes in the precipitation, distribution, evapotranspiration are already significant. Floods, droughts, cyclones and hurricanes are occurring with near unprecedented frequency and intensity, which is affecting both surface and ground water supplies. An example would be the African Sahel. During the 1950s and 1960s the decrease in precipitation over this region was 50 percent. During the 1970s and 1980s the decrease in precipitation was another 25 percent.[15]  With even a rise in sea level of a few inches,  the freshwater and salt water will mix and the brackish water will move inland, thus having major impacts on coastal areas.  The Bay of Bengal as well as the Gulf area along New Orleans already exhibits this problem.  In the Bay of Bengal, mangrove trees that previously protected the land from the violent onslaughts of hurricanes and cyclones were removed to make way for shrimp fisheries along the coast.  Along New Orleans the natural wetlands were removed to make way for commercial development, leaving the city completely open to the whims of inundating ocean waters.  Climate has a major effect on ecological systems which are entirely interwoven with precious fresh water supplies.

 

Most of the earth’s fresh water resources are stored in ice caps, ice sheets and glaciers.  Up until recently, 90 percent of fresh water was contained in frozen form on the earth’s surface.  Most available fresh water drains steadily from glaciers in North and South America, Europe and Asia and flows downward to sustain river flows below.  In addition, underground ice in the form of permafrost covers northern Europe and Asia, northern Canada and Antarctica. In the past this permafrost ranged from 400 to 650 meters.  Recent reports, however, indicate that all these areas are melting, and in the process are releasing huge volumes of methane gas into the atmosphere.   

 

According to Lord May, former chief scientific advisor to the British Government, mounting evidence indicates global warming to be the single biggest threat to the world, and particularly to developing countries. Latest studies indicate that the rise in greenhouse gases is directly responsible for increasingly severe drought conditions and potential widespread famine in the eastern African countries.[16] Lord May further cited research by James Verdin of the US Geological Survey that shows the steady decrease of rainfall in Ethiopia and adjacent countries since 1996, which corresponds to an increase in surface-water temperatures in the southern Indian Ocean for the same time period. The reduced rainfall is causing reduction in crops and hence food supply.[17] The greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere are rising.

 

Pollution of Water

The quality of water depends upon many factors, including geology, climate, topography and use of the land, as well as, for example, the duration of time that the water has been stored.  Acid rain is a factor in water quality. Contamination of ground water is also a problem in some areas.  Contamination can originate from leaks in storage tanks, from mine tailings or accidental spills.[18] In the case of Iraq, ground water is contaminated with depleted uranium dust from American bombs. It will take centuries for that contaminated water to be cleansed. Two natural contaminants of ground water are fluoride and arsenic. Arsenic occurs naturally in the earth’s crust at a certain depth under the ground. In Bangladesh it occurs at about 300 feet below the ground.  The tube wells in Bangladesh which have been built to that depth are absorbing the arsenic, with the result that the well water is contaminated. The consequence of drinking arsenic-contaminated water is cancer of the skin, lungs, bladder and kidney. The effects of the poison begin with thickening and pigmentation changes in the skin. It takes approximately ten years for the cancer to fully develop and life to be terminated as a result of arsenic-contaminated well water. The arsenic contamination in the wells of w:st="on">Bangladesh is considered as “the largest mass ‘poisoning’ in history,” and will affect up to 77 million of the country’s 133 million inhabitants.[19]

 

Other pollutants of water are man-made.  Domestic sewage, municipal waste and agro- and other industrial waste/by-products are the main pollutants of ground water.  These chemicals are presently discharged into rivers, lakes and aquifers.  Faecal matter, which is sometimes infected with various pathogens, and comprises one of the wastes discharged into rivers and lakes, causes higher rates of disease and mortality in the populations using the water. 

 

Another problem of organic material discharged into the fresh water bodies is their high amounts of nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus. These two elements when in overabundance cause eutrophication of lakes and reservoirs, which in turn leads to abnormal plant growth and depleted oxygen.[20] Nitrogen is also a common ingredient in agricultural fertilizer, which has probably led to nitrate concentrations exceeding WHO guidelines of 10 milligrams per liter.[21]  

 

Residue from pesticides, waste dumps, mine drainage, and industrial solvents along with heavy metal concentrations have all led to severe contamination of ground and surface water. Problems of contaminated water are particularly acute in Asia, Africa and South America,[22] but with the growing privatization of water, this is extending to Europe and North America.     

 

Corporatization of Water

In country after country, water is changing from being a fundamental human right to a mere commodity. Vandana Shiva tells us that the war in Iraq was not waged only for oil. It was also waged over water.  She describes the American corporate mentality as being, if the US corporations cannot get what they want through the WTO, they will get it through open invasion and war. But, get profit they must.  Shiva describes the heroic Bolivians of Cochabamba, where water is increasingly scarce. The World Bank in 1999 recommended privatizing the city’s water supply, and the Drinking Water and Sanitation Law, which allowed for water privatization, was passed in October 1999.[23]  Almost immediately afterwards the residential monthly water bills shot up to more than $20 a month – in a place where people earn less than $100 a month. Within two months the people formed “La Coordniara” de Defense del Aqua y de la Vida – The Coalition in Defense of Water and Life. The coalition shut down the city for four days via mass mobilization. Millions of Bolivians marched on the streets of Cochambamba and halted all transportation services. In February 2000 La Coordinara organized a peaceful march to demand the repeal of the Drinking Water and Sanitation Law, which allowed privatization.  The Coalition proclaimed that water is a fundamental human right and not something to be used for profits. Their demands were violently suppressed. People were arrested, some were killed, and the media was censored. But, in April, the people won the war. Bechtel Company left Bolivia. The government was compelled to revoke the privatization law, and the water company was handed over to the people to manage. As they tried to own the wells of Bolivia, it is sure that Bechtel will likewise work to ‘own’ the ancient Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

 

Corporatization of water resources is growing.  In the United States more and more municipalities are faced with growing maintenance and budgetary problems. Town mayors now work hand in hand with multinational corporations.  The formerly public water industry now calls upon these corporations to solve their water problems, which to remedy will cost taxpayers billions of dollars.[24] 

 

Water privatization, also referred to as “public-private partnerships,” emerged in the United States in the 1970s when dirty leaks and foul odors drove the city of Burlingame, California to outsource the management of its waste water to a corporation now called Veolia Water – a spin-off of the French corporation Vivendi.[25]  It is only recently, since the onset of the 21^st century, that the trend has gone global, with five percent of all water utilities now privatized.  According the Environmental Protection Agency, to maintain and upgrade drinking water infrastructures will cost $280 billion over the next twenty years, while repair and expansion of wastewater systems will run as much as $450 billion.[26] style='mso-spacerun:yes'>  The National Association of Water Companies in the U.S. is pushing for federal legislation that will make it easier to construct so-called public-private sector partnerships. The U.S. Conference of Mayors is partnering with NAWS to advocate fewer restrictions on water privatization.

 

Gleick points out in his research that privatization of water leads to great risks because, while local public water utilities are “a natural monopoly,” private companies uncontrolled by government regulations stand to exploit the people without mercy in the name of the bottom line.[27] Sara Grusky of Public Citizen’s Water for All campaign says it is completely wrong for something as basic as water to be in the hands of private companies. Today we see corporations like Vivendi, RWE and Suez swallowing up the smaller, perhaps local water companies. As Gleick points out, when local water is owned and managed by companies on another continent, then money goes out of the local community and across the ocean. Profits do not remain to benefit and build the local communities. The great distance between owner and clients make it also extremely easy for water owners to raise rates to their heart’s content. They are not involved or concerned with the common people on another continent.

 

According to Gleick, water should remain in the hands of the public. One solution, he says, would be for the federal government to set up a sustainable and comprehensive water trust fund that can be used to assist local public water utilities during times of difficulty.[28]  Another solution proposed would be to organize “public-public partnerships,” which would include government-led reconstruction of local water systems, but such that the public continues to maintain complete control over their water.  Public Citizen has reported that San Diego, California and Phoenix, Arizona have saved millions of dollars of public money by improving their water utilities systems through their own internal reforms.  According to Jack Bellanger of the Minnesota Water Alliance, people need to first understand that availability of clean water is both a human right and a human responsibility, which will then lead to people developing local, sustainable water systems. As Sara Grusky logically explains, if the local community controls the water, it means that the local people know the people who work in the water company, and vice versa. This will automatically ensure a far greater level of fairness, equity and justice.[29]

 

III.      Select Nations

 

China

China has a booming economy. But right alongside that booming economy, the country contains 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world.  The most serious aspect of this pollution is water pollution.[30]  The problems are water pollution, water scarcity, and at times severe water flooding.  If these problems are not solved, the water issues will begin to curb China’s economic growth as well as food production for its burgeoning population. 

 

 

 

While 44 percent of the population lives in northern China and 48 percent of agricultural land is also in the north, only 14 percent of China’s water is in the northern provinces.  The Yellow River, once one of China’s largest rivers, has been so abused due to poor diversion and irrigation planning that presently for two-thirds of the year its waters do not even reach the ocean.  South of Beijing farmers are suffering as they see precious water of the Juma River diverted to the city.

 

Pollution is caused by factories that have mushroomed along the river banks without accompanying water treatment plants, which leads to 80 percent of factory wastewater returning to the rivers untreated.  As a result China has the highest emission of organic water pollutants globally.  Water quality is poor and in some areas pure poison.[31]

 

Chinese authorities have determined the solution to be a massive diversion of water from the Yangzte River in the south to the Yellow River in the north.  The Yangtze River originates in the Tibetan Plateau and, fed by snow and ice, moves on down through the mountains and finally empties into the South China Sea near Shanghai.  It is the largest river in China and third largest in the world. It extends 3,900 miles in length while its width ranges from eight to more than 1,000 meters during flood season.  The Yangtze differs from the Nile and the Amazon because of the far greater populations living on its banks. About 350 million people live near the Yangtze and its tributaries.  The river contains unparalleled beauty as it wends its way through mountains and then through steep gorges rising as high as 3,000 feet.  But, what happens to the Yangtze affects 350 million people. 

 

 

The plan is to bring water from the Danjiangkou Reservoir, a huge man-made lake 600 miles to the south next to the Yangtze River.[32] The reason?  The Yellow River, which serves the people of the north, including Beijing, is getting exhausted. In addition, the underground water of the north has been all but pumped dry. Hence there is no visible alternative but to bring water from the south. The plan is to have Yangtze water flowing into Beijing in time for the Olympic Games scheduled to take place there in 2008. When completed, the canal will be 200 feet wide, and be the length of France. It will carry ten million acre-feet of water annually from southern China up to Beijing.[33]  To achieve this engineering wonder, the Danjiangkou Reservoir will need to be raised to a total height of 550 feet, which will cause the displacement of a quarter million people presently living along its shores. Here begins the human cost of the project.  Mega water projects invariably seem to have mega human costs hand in hand with the published mega economic costs of construction.  Bringing the water north from the Yangtze River is only one part of a three-stage plan.  The second stage will be to extract water from the mouth of the Yangtze River and pour it into the ancient, 1,500-year-old Grand Canal, built in another era for the purpose of transporting rice from southern to northern China.[34]  The plan is to clean out the canal and bring more of the Yangtze River water, taking it underneath the Yellow River and onto the North China Plain, to bring relief to the ten million populated city of Tianjin, presently starving for water.[35]  The third plan is to collect the headwaters of the Yangtze River behind a 1,000-foot-high dam to be built among the melting Tibetan glaciers. The caught water will then be transported through a 70-mile tunnel to eventually merge into the Yellow River, so as to again provide more total water to the water-parched northern area of China.  According to China’s hydrologic engineers, this mammoth plan must be done.  The north is turning into rapidly into desert. It has already reached a state of water crisis.  The crisis is exacerbated by the fact that the water table under Beijing, for example, has fallen 200 feet in the last 40 years. In some areas, 90 percent of the underground water is simply gone.  At present, 90 percent of the Yangtze River water flows directly into the ocean. [36]  Chinese engineers believe the water must be retrieved and harnessed to serve the human population and end the present crisis, which will soon become far more serious than any possible oil shortage in China. 

 

The massive water diversion project will take several years to complete.  While it may have positive results, the negative results are already known:  displacement of hundreds of thousands of already impoverished people and loss of biodiversity, of ecological equipoise. At present all efforts are focused on this gigantic project of water diversion to the north via dams, reservoirs, tunnels, canals and aqueducts. However, the equally severe problems of water pollution and water wastage have not yet been emphasized by the present administration.   If these two issues are not solved in tandem with massive water diversion, the actual results of the diversion will be far lower than present expectations.  

 

If water waste in agriculture, in the form of leakages and evaporation in irrigation systems, were curbed, it could represent huge water savings, water conservation.  Presently one hectare of farmland uses 20,000-30,000 cubic meters of water. Changing to drip irrigation, for example, could reduce this amount by two-thirds.[37]

 

 

 

 

 

 

B.        India

India’s water deficit – the difference between demand and availability of water – is the greatest of any country in the world, and three-four times greater than China’s deficit.  In the mid 1990s India’s water deficit was calculated to be about 100 billion cubic meters annually. Groundwater depletion is causing a drop in aquifers of three to ten feet each year, causing the cost of pumping to become prohibitive.[38]  The scores of dams that have been built serve to benefit the well-to-do larger landholders by providing valuable electricity for large-scale irrigation of croplands, while the poor people remain impoverished.  When large dams are constructed, scores of thousands of villagers, 89 percent of whom are tribals, are displaced and rarely relocated.  If relocated, they live on subsistence crops like millet, barley and corn. With large dams providing the capacity for bigger, greater irrigation, the farmers start cash crops like sugarcane and wheat. Sugarcane requires huge amounts of water. Poor farmers cannot afford the pesticides and fertilizers required to grow cash crops, and end up selling their small holdings to larger landlords, themselves becoming beggars or day laborers. 

 

 

Part of the Indian problem is that “regular” Hindus think the tribal people are close to subhuman.  Tribals use the tried and tested method of slash-and-burn agriculture, which means using certain plots for several years until the land becomes fallow, and then moving on to new forestland.[39]  It was the indigenous form of crop rotation, and it worked. However, Western people, starting with the British and ending with the Americans, showed no respect for indigenous farming methods and insist on implementing growth of cash crops with accompanying horrendous water wastage enabled only through large dam construction. 

 

A downstream effect of large dams has been the destruction of Narmada’s hilsa fishery. It was the largest on the west coast of India. The large dam will wipe it out. 

 

Groundwater in India supplies about 80 percent of the domestic water supply in the rural areas. In the past 30 years approximately 3 million hand-pump boreholes have been built. In 2003 244 km³/year of water was being pumped for irrigation purposes from 15-17 million motorized dugwells and tubewells. Nearly 70 percent of Indian agricultural production is being sustained by groundwater.[40] While groundwater recharge estimates vary greatly, it would be safe to say that present recharging of groundwater supplies is not keeping up with removal and use.

 

Indian monsoons are characterized by huge heavy drops of water falling suddenly and torrentially, drenching everything in their wake. Perhaps we can call it the most exciting rainfall in the world. After about one hundred hours of rain spread over an equal number of days, the Indian monsoon moves onward and upward, but not before its rains have swollen rivers, filled reservoirs, and turned parched land a lush green.[41]  In the north, the monsoon rains combine with the melting glacier water to feed the great Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers, which sustain life for millions.  When the monsoon rains arrive, millions of Indians celebrate as they watch their ponds and storage tanks fill and well water levels rise.  Human beings cannot live for longer than five-seven days without water.  Hence, the monsoon rains  are the great gift to the people.  Monsoon rains are part of that endless water cycle that has taken place on the earth since the beginning of geological time.  Clouds form over the Indian Ocean, and then the moisture is converted into rain drops which fall on the ground. There the water gets enmeshed in plants or is consumed by humans and animals. It may simply run into the rivers and oceans. Or it may merge into frozen ice caps and Himalayan glaciers.[42] Still more water vanishes deep into the ground to form part of ancient aquifers holding that most precious jewel for millions of years. This water cycle is a wondrous turning of the endless wheel of creation.

 

 

Drenched by monsoon rains, villagers in Bangladesh pass submerged rice paddies.

 

On June 25, 2005 the World Bank released yet another draft report on “India’s Water Economy: Bracing for a Turbulent Future.” As Vandana Shiva points out, the World Bank, working on behalf of the wealthiest men in the world, reduces water to an ‘economy’ and a ‘market economy.’ The World Bank, one of the most prominent and influential institutions in the world today, is determining the future attitudes towards and methods of global water utilization. As Shiva writes in her article, “India’s Water Future,” the World Bank cannot conceive of terms such as “water ecology,” “water culture,” or “water democracy.”[43]  In fact, she writes, dismantling the traditional structures of water democracy, “the public good, ecological sustainability, protection of the water commons and defense of community rights is the prime object of the World Bank approach.”[44]  The evidence says that water privatization as advocated by the World Bank has failed in country after country.  What will work, says Shiva, is putting water back into the hands of the people to be cooperatively, collectively managed. It is the right of the people to harness and manage their own water resources.  Community-based approaches to water harvesting and distribution invariably succeed. Privatization makes a handful of people wealthy but destroys the lives of the common people. It does not work for the public good, and it is in direct opposition to community rights. The World Bank, as indicated in its most recent report, wants to destroy the extant community-based water systems which presently flourish across India and replace them with water controlled by private corporations. It will compel the common people to become completely dependent on those corporations for their survival.  The free market grows while the common people die for want of a cup of water. It never occurs to World Bank members comprising some of the wealthiest men on our planet, that water is a fundamental inalienable right of the people.  This is part of what comprises international law. Shiva says that by ignoring the fact that water is a finite resource and stating that water access and distribution be driven by (insatiable) demand markets, the World Bank is actively deepening the water crisis, not only in India but globally.  In addition, the Bank in its reports misleads the public by quoting fraudulent figures such as per capita water storage to push its personal agenda for large dams which redirect rivers flowing in rural areas to urban and industrial areas.[45] 

The figures are both fudged and completely wrong. They fail to take into account the millions of community-based water storage tanks and ponds. Combined, they store more water than the large dams, and they serve the local people with reservations or restrictions based on ability to pay. Large dams, says Shiva, have already displaced 40 million people in the past 50 years.  If dams are constructed at five times the rate of the past half century, it means that 200 million, or one fifth of India’s population will be displaced.  We can be sure that those displaced are the poor, half-naked, starving, downtrodden members of society.  The World Bank is directly to blame for India’s water crisis, and they continue to keep water supplies in a crisis stage.  Their notions of privatization will destroy the beautiful water culture of the Jai Mandirs to be found in thousands of villages across the length and breadth of the land. It will destroy India’s bountiful, rich ecology, and leave local communities disenfranchised and facing new, stark levels of impoverishment.  Our work today is to fight the onslaught of water privatization and corporatization.  It is to defend the rights of every human being to free water as per his minimum requirements.  It is to base the management of India’s water not on the vision of the World Bank but on the glorious vision of the common people.

 

 Large dam building in India and elsewhere is at the core of conflicts, as it involves water scarcity, environmental destruction, loss of biodiversity, social justice / injustice and displacement generally of millions of indigenous peoples.  It further highlights the growing gap between rich and poor, as the rich are invariably unaffected by large dams and generally stand to profit, while the poor have their lives affected and often bodies displaced. The World Bank in giving maximum loans to countries for building large dams was the biggest culprit as they ignored all the collateral damage of dams while publicly claiming to work for the poor people.  By the mid 1990s so many of their dam projects had turned into disasters that a group called International Rivers Network of Berkeley, California demanded the creation of an independent commission to assess the viability of World Bank dam projects. Thus the World Commission on Dams was born in 1997[46], comprising of an independent body of twelve commissioners, whose job was to assess the positive and negative impacts of proposed World Bank dam projects, with the long-term goal being to establish international criteria and guidelines for building and managing dams while simultaneously looking out for the welfare of indigenous peoples and local biodiversity.

Medha Patkar has spent the last 20 years fighting large dam construction in India.

 

In 1997 the World Commission on Dams, whose commissioners included the activist Medha Patkar, submitted their final report entitled Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision-Making.  The report on dams was indeed damning. It said large dams involved huge delays and hence huge cost overruns. Invariably they did not produce the expected water volume, and were not financially profitable. The environmental costs were beyond vast, were in fact irreparable, including loss of biodiversity and destruction of entire ecosystems.  Dams in tropical locations emit substantial greenhouse gases from rotting plants in shallow reservoirs.[47] Worst has been the social impact of large dams as they displace thousands to millions of people, with promises of so-called relocation invariably broken by the governments involved.  The Commission report also stipulated 26 guidelines to follow related to decision-making on the building of prospective dams, one of which is the “free, prior and informed consent” of the indigenous peoples who stand to suffer displacement in the wake of those dams.  Notably, while the World Bank created the World Commission on Dams, once the Report was submitted, the World Bank turned its back on its own creation, minimalized the Report’s findings and ignored its recommendations.  Due to its own vested interests (profit for its corporate friends), the Bank has ignored the Report. However, the Report is becoming a standard reference document for more and more countries, including so far South Africa, Vietnam, Thailand and Nepal.  As Jacques Leslie says, “the report hovers over dam projects as an admonition to dam builders in the name of human decency and environmental sanity.”[48]   The World Commission on Dams (WCD) Report was comprehensive and thorough. The commissioners carried out in-depth studies of eight large dams on five continents and briefer reviews of 125 more large dams in 56 countries. They assessed social, environmental, economic and financial issues. In addition the Commission studied possible alternatives to large dams based on hundreds of submissions by concerned individuals and organizations.[49] The Commission determined that the costs of large dams far outweigh the gains, based upon the following facts:

 

1.                   Large dams have forced 40-80 million people from their homes and lands, leading to severe economic hardship and community dispersal and collapse. Indigenous peoples have suffered maximally. People living downstream suffer from water-borne diseases.

2.                   Large dams cause vast and irreparable ecological damage, including the extinction of fish and the loss of huge tracts of forestland, farmland and wetlands.

3.                   Whatever benefits came from large dams have gone to the wealthy members of society, while the poor people got little to no benefit and rather bear the costs.

 

In view of the above findings, the WCD made the following recommendations:

 

1.                  Dams should not be constructed without the prior approval of the affected people, particularly not without the prior approval of indigenous and tribal peoples.

2.                  The people to be affected must be involved in every step of decision-making.

3.                   Before building any new large dams, it should be assessed by the local people along with professionals whether any alternative steps can be taken to avoid construction of a large dam.

4.                   Reviews of existing dams should be undertaken at regular intervals to determine their safety and possible termination of use.

5.                   Steps must be undertaken immediately to provide reparations, financial and otherwise, to peoples displaced and/or suffering from the earlier construction of large dams.

6.                   Steps must be undertaken immediately to restore surrounding ecosystems to their previous status.[50]

 

When Jacques Leslie traveled to Domkhedi, headquarters of Andolan, the anti-dam movement in India headed by Medha Patkar, the locals frowned on seeing his bottle of water. Bottled water, they told him, is an instrument of globalization.  Year after year, when the monsoon rains cause reservoir waters to rise, Medha Patkar, now 52 years old, uses the chance to attempt drowning for the cause – to stop construction of large dams. Invariably, the police intervene, to save themselves the embarrassment of her death.  People say Medha is the embodiment of morality.  She has spent her entire life fighting the construction of large dams, by organizing marches, sit-ins, occupations, office seizures, and gheraos (surrounding officials, at times for days on end, until they agree to the demands of the Andolan, the movement founded by Medha to block large dam construction. She sets up road and traffic blockades, closes villages to pro-dam officials, repeatedly tries to drown herself in rising reservoir waters, and makes regular declarations to drown unless officials respond with action. In most cases, the result has been ever greater police brutality against her and the tribals who make up her undying supporters. 

 

 

Because of the water stopped by the dam, the Narmada river now looks like a lake in this region.

 

In India 350 million people – one third of the population – are environmental refugees and live on the margins of society.  Large dams have displaced 21-55 million of that 350 million. Consequently, hundreds of human rights groups have taken birth all over India. Medha Patkar, through her intense sacrifice, became the spokeswoman for all.  The reward for all groups, including Medha’s Andolan, is police beatings, police rapes, and even police killings, even when groups were only requesting food for displaced refugees.  According to Medha, the alternative to large dams is to build check dams to run mini-hydroelectric plants near villages to provide the modest electricity needs of villages.  For water, villagers should use rooftop water in addition to small check dams.  The rallying cries of the Andolan are: “We are all – one!  To whom does the forest and the land belong?  It belongs to us!” 

 

The less visible tragedy of large dams is that it not only displaces people physically, it destroys communities, and hence entire social lives of people.  Sixty percent of displaced people in India are tribal people.   The same villagers who before survived by fishing, are no longer allowed to fish in the dam reservoir, as it is “owned” by a local contractor.  Globalization – capitalism – wins the day.  As Medha says, the World Bank is nothing but a loan shark, always looking for more ways to squeeze money from the poorest, most helpless people on earth. After eight years of struggle with the World Bank, she said, “I know what it eats and what it drinks.”[51]  The World Bank is pro-dam and pro privatization. The Andolan, under the relentless guidance of Medha Patkar, has fought a hard battle against the World Bank and shown the world that indigenous peoples and ecology cannot be ignored. So much harm to people and environment cannot be tolerated.  Medha spent years walking from one tribal village to another, thus gaining their unbounded love, affection and devotion.

 

The Tehri Dam, presently in various stages of construction on the headwaters of the Ganges River, above the town of Tehri in the western Himalayas, is an example of a dam being built in a seismic zone and near the spot of a recent earthquake.   Engineers intend to drown the entire valley by building the highest dam in Asia. The location of the dam is at the narrowest point of a gorge at the end of the valley. When the dam is completed, the valley will hold 3 million acre-feet of water.  South of the Tehri Dam, the people in the Indian capital of New Delhi are desperate for water and face chronic shortages.  Other cities like Allahabad and Kanpur are equally desperate for electricity to power their industries. Farmers across northern India are weeping for water for their crops.  In early 2005, the first stage of completion occurred, which flooded Tehri town and 23 villages in the valley, causing the displacement of more than 80,000 people.  However, greater tragedy lies in store for 300,000 people living downstream in the towns of Hardwar, Devaprayag and Rishikesh, all famous sites of religious pilgrimage for centuries.  Neutral seismologists not involved with the Tehri dam project believe that when the dam is completed, it will create a huge risk of earthquake, which can destroy the dam and send millions of acres and a 130-foot wall of water down through the gorge that will bury these three ancient cities.  But perhaps the worst aspect of dam building, as reported in the Uttaranchal News in August 2005, is that the 100,000 people already displaced and dispossessed by the dam have not been compensated as promised by the involved authorities. They are homeless and in abject poverty. Neither the Congress Party, the BJP nor local state bureaucrats have bothered to properly care for and rehabilitate the thousands of displaced people.[52]span> This amounts to a crime against humanity.  If thousands of these people die, it amounts to state and corporate genocide.

 

Tehri Dam under Construction

 

 

C.        Bangladesh

A health catastrophe is developing in Bangladesh and parts of West Bengal in silent, insidious steps unknown to the world. Millions of people are already affected as they drink the ground water from wells that are heavily contaminated with arsenic. For the past two decades, thanks to the World Bank, IMF and other well-meaning foreign agencies, tube wells were promoted all over the country.  However, in the 1980s scientists began to find high levels of arsenic in the well water.  Inorganic arsenic is released to the ground water under natural conditions. Whether or not it affects well water depends upon the depth of the tube well.  The shallow, indigenous wells of about ten meters depth, made by the villagers, do not have arsenic. It is found only deeper in the ground (200-300 meters) and then seeps into the well water.  At present three out of four tube wells in Bangladesh are privately owned.  The wells consist of tubes that are 5 centimeters in diameter and go into the ground to a depth of around 200 meters. The tubes are capped above the ground with a cast iron or steel hand pump and can be used by any adult or child.[53]

 

Red tube well, arsenicated water, danger, hazard, risk

 

 

It is surely ironic that while Bangladesh has tons of water, the majority is undrinkable. The surface water contains dangerous bacteria while the large amounts of ground water obtained from the deeper wells contains equally dangerous arsenic.

 

The arsenic contaminated water in Bangladesh is a catastrophe.  As far back as July 2001, researchers at the United Nations University, in a joint study with the Earth Identity Project, declared that emergency measures were required to avert a human disaster.  In that year, between 28 and 57 million people drew well water in Bangladesh and West Bengal. Both these states have arsenic contamination.  The number already contaminated is greater than the global number of HIV-infected persons.  Well water over most regions of Bangladesh has been naturally contaminated by arsenic-rich rocks underground.  There are cheap, local methods to render the water pure and remove the arsenic. However, this work is moving forward at snail’s pace.  The victims are all poor rural people, not the wealthy city-dwellers.  Due to the huge number of gastrointestinal diseases and infant mortality that arose from drinking surface water, more than four million tube wells were installed in Bangladesh with World Bank loans, to utilize underground water in aquifers about 200 meters deep.  The arsenic-rich rocks are at this very level inside the earth.[54] 

 

People poisoned by arsenic over months or years suffer from higher levels of lung and bladder cancer, from skin lesions, hypertension and heart disease, as well as gangrene and diabetes.  The common signs of arsenicosis are hyperpigmentation on the upper torso and keratoses on the palms and soles of the feet. Research suggests that vitamins help to offset the disease. Other studies show that homeopathic medicine can help to thwart the onset of symptoms.

 

Dr. Fakhrul Islam, a researcher at International Development Enterprises (IDE) on the outskirts of Dhaka, has invented a simple arsenic filter, which involves using a 30-liter container filled with filter media. Ferrous sulphate solution is bonded to crushed brick particles. By using the right size of brick particles, and due to the porous nature of brick, 100 percent of the arsenic can be removed.[55] Lack of funds is hampering further research and implementation of this inexpensive method of arsenic removal from the country’s water.

 

Other steps for action suggested are: (1) People must go to the villages to educate the rural people regarding arsenic contamination and teach them how to filter the arsenic out of the water. Villagers should be taught how to test their water to find out its relative safety for drinking. (2) Alternative water sources should be found quickly for the rural populations.  (3) All villagers should be tested for arsenic poisoning and treated accordingly.  At present the use of vitamins and homeopathic medicines can help cleanse the body of arsenic poisoning.  (4) People must compel the Bangladesh government to become pro-active in creating immediate programs to provide relief for rural victims and treatment for their diseases.  It must become the short-term and long-term health policy of the government.  In addition to treatment, the government should arrange for rural populations to have nutritious food without cost, on a long-term basis. (5) There must be active participation in these projects by the rural populations as well as complete transparency  regarding all steps taken to alleviate the problem.  According to Hans van Ginkel, Rector of UN University, the poisoning of millions of people on such a scale is unheard of in history.

 

 

It is ironic that the reason thousands of tube wells were installed all over Bangladesh was to avoid the high mortality and morbidity rates caused by contaminated surface water.  The most urgent intervention at present is to locate and identify arsenic-free drinking water.  This tragedy further indicates that groundwater used in other countries globally should also be tested for arsenic contamination. [56] 

 

Surface water contamination has been a problem in Bangladesh for many decades. It is contaminated with numerous microorganisms, which cause acute gastrointestinal disease, often from water taken from stagnant ponds.  Diseases caused by stagnant surface water are listed below in Table 2.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 2

 

Waterborne diseases	Responsible pathogen	Route of exposure	Mode of transmission
Cholera	Vibrio cholerae bactgerial	Gastro-intestina	Often waterborne
Botulism	Clostridium botulinum bacteria	Clostridium botulinum bacteria	Food/water borne; can grow in food
Typhoid	Salmonella typhi bacteria	Gastro-intestinal	Water/food born
Hepatitis A	Hepatitis A virus	Gastro-intestinal	Gastro-intestinal
Dysentery	Shigella dysenteriae bacteria or Entamoeba histolytica amoeba	Gastro-intestinal	Food/water
Cryptosporidiosis	Cryptosporidium parvum protozoa	Gastro-intestinal	Waterborne; resists chlorine
Polio	Polioviruses	Gastro-intestinal	Exposure to untreated sewage; may also be waterborne
Giardia	Giardia lamblia protozoa	Gastro-intestinal	waterborne

Source: www.sos-arsenic.net

 

Surface water in Bangladesh is generally purified of harmful bacteria by cooking and boiling the water over a simple wood fire.  The IDE has created a coil of aluminum tubing to encircle the fire within a walled structure. The water is poured into the coil and is boiled and sterilized as it passes around the fire.[57]  Another solution being investigated is the harvesting of rainwater. Bangladesh has heavy monsoon rains, which can be caught in containers that are both cheap and easy to install.  After the initial costs of installation by each residence, the water would be free.  IDE has created a simple, inexpensive bamboo hand pump, whose use is spreading quietly among the farmers, with already 1.5 million sold. Bamboo is used because of its abundance in Bangladesh, making it easily affordable.  When farmers and villagers learn to use locally-made pumps, and other water systems, they can reduce and finally eliminate their need for “foreign” aid, which has reaped such disaster in this little country.  The IDE has also created a drip irrigation method, which involves putting a large bag on the ground that allows water to be drip through small valves in the bag, one drop at a time, onto the plant. The drawback to all these ingenious inventions is that thus far the Bangladesh government does not support them and rather prefers to support World Bank and other “outside”-funded projects.

 

 

 

 

Other proposed solutions to the arsenic contamination crisis include: (1) identifying tube wells with low arsenic content; (2) providing water filters for every household. Candle filtration systems are available at low cost and are easy to use and maintain; (3) providing small packets of chemicals that remove arsenic and other pollutants after being mixed in water and allowed to stand overnight; (4) arranging for purified, chlorinated surface water use. (5) closing tube wells with a high degree of arsenic contamination as soon as clean water sources are available in that locality.[58]  (6) providing nutritious supplements, tonics and vitamins to the rural population free of cost to raise their immune systems, which will help to combat the onset of arsenic-induced cancer. (7) providing moisturizing lotions and treatment for hand and foot infections and lesions; and (8) constructing new tube wells to a depth of less than 200 meters (the level at which inorganic arsenic is found in the rock layer) or constructing indigenous dug wells to a depth of 20-30 meters;  (9) again, rainwater harvesting, providing rural residences with cisterns for rainwater storage, will go a long way towards alleviating the crisis.  Finally, (10) educating the people of the problem so they understand the gravity and importance of testing their water and ensuring that what they drink is safe to drink.

 

D.        Egypt

The biggest conversation topic with regard to Egypt is the High Aswan Dam on the Nile River.   Proponents of the dam say it heralded a major breakthrough in the country, relieving the people of both floods and droughts, providing drinking water agricultural water and electricity to every single village. The Dam is the mainstay of Egyptian economy.  Opponents of the Dam say that the resulting environmental destruction has been catastrophic.  For thousands of years the floods of the Nile covered the riparian countryside, causing barley and wheat to flourish.  Sometimes, however, the river waters failed to arrive. Crops failed, people and even entire dynasties died with them.  Today crops do not fail because the Nasser Lake reservoir stores water for the people. Rather, within five years of the dam’s completion, agricultural output in Egypt increased up to 20 percent.[59]  The Dam retains river waters, allowing them to flow during the dry season, which allows for double and triple cropping, often including water-guzzling cash crops such as cotton and rice.  During droughts, the water in Lake Nasser has protected the people from famine.

 

Nile River next to Egyptian desert

 

 

The Aswan Dam appears on the surface as a panacea. However, environmental problems are growing.  Insufficient water is reaching the Nile Delta.  While world media focused on the possible destruction of precious, ancient Egyptian monuments, the far greater tragedy barely covered in the media was the dislocation and impoverization of 130,000 Nubians, half of whom lived in Egypt, half in Sudan.  Sardines in the eastern Mediterranean have vanished.  Algae has built up in the river and caused the spread of bilharzias, a debilitating disease caused by snails that live in the stagnant waters of the reservoir and canals.   In pre-dam years, 90 percent of the Nile’s silt was washed into the Mediterranean, and between 10-25 tons covered the river’s riparian farmlands in annual layers, creating rich, natural fertilizer. The silt kept the flood plains fertile for thousands of years. Today, nearly all the silt is caught by the dam and collects at the bottom of Lake Nasser reservoir.  This greatest gift of the Nile no longer inundates the adjacent lands. As a result, Egypt is one of the world’s heaviest users of artificial fertilizers and pesticides. The delta of the Nile is in serious condition. Two-thirds of Egypt’s farmland is in the delta region.  The dam has caused severe change to these farmlands. First, no silt flows down to inundate and fertilize the land.  As a result, the salty waters of the Mediterranean are encroaching more and more onto the farmlands, higher up the river.  The delta coastline is steadily eroding. Villages once located on the coast now lie submerged in Mediterranean waters. The sandbars that were a fixture in the delta have eroded, allowing more salt water to move upstream onto the land.  This is compounded by rising sea levels due to global warming – a phenomena unprecedented in more than 8,000 years.  Every year the irrigation systems leave salt behind. It is an amount coming to half a ton per acre. Salt is toxic to crops, and it is encroaching on more and more land. The Egyptian government has spent more money ($2 billion) to remove the salt in the delta than it cost to build the Aswan Dam. 

 

 

Aswan High Dam

 

Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser had constructed many roads, canals, power lines and water pumping stations on more than 900,000 acres of desert west of the Nile Delta.  However, the land is coarse sand and becomes easily water-logged.  Today Egypt is irrigating another 1.5 million acres in the Western Desert from Lake Nasser and storing it in the man-made Toshka Lakes.[60] President Mubarak intends for the Toshka Lakes area to become a new industrial and agricultural center in Egypt.  However, engineers predict that these grandiose water diversion projects will lead in future to severe water shortage.  They predict that the annual water shortage may reach 11 million acre-feet by the year 2025.  To avoid such a shortage, the government is planning to increase the flow of the Nile by accessing a large area of remote wetland on the White Nile in Sudan.  Presently the waters of the White Nile meander for many miles before moving north towards the Aswan Dam.  During that movement, nearly half the river water is lost to evaporation due to the searing heat and endless sun.[61] At the time of construction of the Aswan Dam, British hydrologists had likewise warned President Nasser that the location of the dam was wrong, that situating at Aswan would result in millions of acre-feet lost annually to evaporation. But, Nasser would not hear of a dam being built higher up river in another country. The dam had to be under his control, hence built on Egyptian soil.  Egypt now wants to build a canal from the White Nile straight down to the Nile River, as with a straight route, a huge quantity of water will be saved from evaporation. At present more than six feet of water evaporate from the top of Lake Nasser each year.  This amounts to an estimated 11 million acre-feet of water.  The government is looking for ways to store this water in cooler places away from the sun’s glare.

 

E.        Libya

The geography of Libya is unique, in that it is the largest true desert in the world.  The land is so devoid of water holes that even camel caravans did not venture to cross the 700 miles from the Libyan coast to the al-Kufra oasis until the 19^th century. 

 

Col Muhammad Qadaffi, leader of Libya on the coast of Northern Africa, had nearly no water in his country. The people, crops and livestock all suffered. To solve his water problem, Qadaffi began construction in the early 1980s of the Great Man-Made River, a gigantic pipe system which carried pure clean water from four huge aquifers buried under the desert sands of southern Libya across the desert to the coastal areas, where today it provides more than 6.5 million cubic meters of water daily.   The Nubian sandstone aquifers date back to the last ice age, at which time the entire Sahara was a huge swampland with water perpetually seeping down into the rocks below.  According to Pearce, the aquifers abruptly ceased filling with water 6,000 years ago when the climate switched to the present desert-like conditions. While to all appearances, the Great Man-Made River is a miracle, or Eighth Wonder of the World, it already has side effects, and it remains to be seen whether those side effects will eventually outweigh the present benefits. Hydrologists estimate there are about 120 billion acre-feet of water in the al-Kufra aquifer. When first started in 1991, the Man-Made River was like a miracle, bringing water to the coastal areas where local aquifers that had hitherto sustained the people and agriculture had been emptied through over-pumping and intrusion of salt water from the Mediterranean. But, already the water table in Libya has dropped substantially. Many hydrologists predict that the water in the aquifers will be used up in anywhere from 15 to 50 years, which would create an unbounded crisis. In addition, depletion of the easternmost al-Kufra aquifer could lead to seepage from the Nile, which could cause animosity and wars between Libya and Egypt/st1:place>. 

 

The water will not flow forever in Libya.   If we assume that Libyan engineers continue to reliably plug the leaks and repair the corrosion taking place in the pipes, they nevertheless that due to pumping, the water tables in Libya have plummeted by more than 300 feet.  The solution, according to Ghista, is to begin massive afforestation programs, which will attract the rain. This will enable the people to harness the rainwater, which alone can guarantee their future survival.[62] 

 

 

IV.     Whither Humanity – Whither Water

Buried under the carefully terraced hills of Palestine and Israel lies an intricate, meticulous network of man-made tunnels large enough for a man to walk in. The sides of the tunnels were neatly quarried, and their endpoints were the terraces above ground, which nurtured orange and lemon trees along with vegetables. Geographer Zvi Ron had rediscovered an ancient, 2,000-year-old underground irrigation system built to bring water in underground aquifers up to the arid surface to give water to thirsty plants.[63] Many of the once scenic terraces these tunnels served are gone. They have been replaced by flat fields and modern mechanical farming as practiced on the Israeli kibbutzes. Most local people, both Arab and Jew, no nothing of the existence of the engineering marvel coursing under their feet.  Some tunnels are empty.  Others continue to channel water in a wide network, even far to the north of Jerusalem.  Zvi Ron calls these tunnels “technical masterpieces.”[64]  In just a few villages, the local people continue to use these spring-flow tunnels. That too, they use them in an ancient, collective style of cooperation and sharing, with each clan of a village taking water once every eight days.  Most of these tunnels were abandoned when the Palestinians fled their homes in 1948 after the creation of the political state of Israel.  According to Zvi Ron, the engineers of 2,000 years ago were engineering geniuses, who understood, for example, the mathematical relationship between water height and the flow it would produce.  This formula is called Darcy’s law, after Henri Darcy who invented it in 1856, long after the creation of this ancient tunnel and irrigation system of 2,000 years ago. Why did this irrigation system die?  So-called modern ideas brought in by the Israelis took over. Land was made flat in order to accommodate large tractors. They built deep boreholes and pumps to bring water for their new fields. They even preferred to construct a huge pipeline called the National Water Carrier, which brought water all the way from the Sea of Galilee, than to explore and utilize the wondrous engineering marvel that lay just under their feet.  Water mechanization has caused deep problems in the region, caused primarily by selfishness. Most water originating in the West Bank ends up in Israeli hands. Israelis can ban construction of new Palestinian wells. Today 80 percent of the rainwater on the West Bank is diverted via Israeli pumps, causing the per capita water consumption of Israelis to be four times greater than Palestinian consumption.[65]  Hence we see that the traditional water harvesting of olden times has been replaced by modern, industrialized and centralized water collection and distribution systems.  These new, large systems are hydrologically inefficient, poorly-planned, and increase inequity among the people.  The old ways of irrigation and water distribution were smaller, more efficient, far less wasteful, and certainly more equitable.[66]  But the most striking aspect of the ancient tunnel irrigation system is that it was far more civilized than today’s systems. It encompassed a compassionate, selfless water ethic that gave fundamental recognition to the fact that water is the collective property of all; it is community property. Hence it was to be used carefully, frugally and wisely, and all inhabitants should have their water needs taken care of.   It is these water ethics that we need to return to today.  The 20^th century has been fraught with megadams, the ecological destruction of lakes and rivers, the wasteful emptying of ancient, underground aquifers. So many mistakes have been made in the last few centuries with regard to the preservation, distribution, and careful utilization of the earth’s most precious resource.  Human beings need to become “keepers of the spring,” and to create an entirely new water ethic on our planet that will be based on those ancient civilizations who knew far, far more than the people of today the real meaning of the word ‘civilization.’ 

 

Small dams can replace big dams and leave biodiversity undisturbed.

 

 

According to Peter Gleick, two “soft” solutions are required.  First, communities need to find new ways to collect water locally.  At present, rain falls anywhere and is merged into the rivers and oceans. That water needs to be harnessed by human beings.  Local storage systems should be built.  The second solution, he says, is to stop wasting the water we have. Three decades ago a tremendous amount of water was wasted every time a toilet was flushed in America.  Today, the amount of water used in one flush has been reduced by three fourths.[67]  American farmers in the year 2000 used about 50 trillion gallons of water for their crops, which is about one third of the country’s total water consumption.  In countries such as Spain, China and Morocco, farmers still irrigate their crops by simply flooding their fields.  A frugal, efficient alternative is to use the drip irrigation system, presently used in countries like United Arab Emirates and other arid regions.  Thin pipes are run across the fields with small holes made next to every single plant. At night the water is turned on and allowed to drip through those holes directly at the base of each plant. Imagine how much water could be saved if all farmers of the world switched to the drip irrigation system!  Another way to save water is to cut the evaporation process by spreading a polymer solution on water surfaces.  Presently huge amounts of water are lost from leaks throughout the distribution system.  Some cities have already found cost-effective ways to stop leaks.  Singapore, for example, has reduced its water leaks down to five percent. For sure they have a good incentive, as being without adequate fresh water, they are dependent upon Malaysia to sell them their water requirements.  span>According to Fred Pearce, author of Keepers of the Spring, only modest changes in water management can remove the present water crisis and would allow the earth’s existing water resources to serve life for hundreds or thousands of years.  The whole world requires a new water ethic, which will emphasize saving and storing water as carefully as we save and store energy.   If people could change their personal habits with regard to water, then it would no longer be necessary to look to mega projects as the only solutions to man-made water crises.

 

A.                  Rainwater Harvesting

In the near future there will be a global water crisis, partly through desertification and partly through mismanagement and waste of extant water supplies. Large rivers such as the Ganges in India and the Thames in London are already so polluted as to be undrinkable. The only solution is to catch the rainwater. Aside from catching rainwater, we need to explore and develop the science of creating artificial rain by using helium, which will bring the clouds presently over the ocean over onto the land.  As an example, at present due to massive deforestation in West Bengal, the rain clouds coming from the Bay of Bengal travel all the way across India and rain on the Arabian Sea.  Earlier these clouds had rained in the area of Magadh, Bihar, on the land.  As a result the level of the Arabian Sea is slowly rising and the Bay of Bengal is becoming more salty.  Due to global deforestation, the water area is increasing and the land area is steadily decreasing on the earth. 

 

The other cause for environmental destruction is the rampant exploitation of subterranean resources such as water, oil and coal.  Sometimes sand is used to fill the cavities left by extraction of these resources. But in other locations the cavities are left empty and will lead to earthquakes as well as will cause the entire ground above these cavities to collapse and fill the hole underneath.  The exploitation of subterranean water supplies is contributing to the desertification of the earth. As the subterranean water table sinks, the surface soil dries and the extant plants whither and die. The only solution is afforestation followed by construction of ponds and lakes to catch the resulting rainwater. 

 

Sarkar says that construction of more deep tube wells is not the solution to the water crisis. Instead, we need to quickly construct thousands of ponds, canals, dams, lakes and reservoirs to catch and store the rainwater, so that people will have water to drink. Sarkar says: “This is the only way out of the water crisis that will confront humanity in the very near future.”[68]

 

Rainwater harvesting has been in use by human being for thousands of years. Evidence of extensive water harvesting systems is ample in the Negev Deserts of Israel dating back 2,000 years. Roman homes and cities were always built to harvest rainwater.  Cisterns and large containers to collect rainwater in the United States, were common in rural areas until the 1920s, and continue to be used today.  Villagers in the Andes Mountains use a long wide piece of thick cloth held up with long poles to collect rainwater.  In Bangladesh, rural rainwater harvesting presents a problem as so many of the homes are built with straw. They would need to convert their roofs at least to tin, which can include a gutter system for catching the rainwater.  

 

Rainwater harvesting is carried out today in many parts of the world. Alaska and Hawaii have long traditions of rainwater harvesting. The city of Austin, Texas offers a rebate for households using rainwater. In some parts of the Caribbean, new homes have rainwater harvesting systems built into the structure.  Gibraltar has one of the largest rainwater harvesting systems in the world.[69]

 

 

 

Professor Khalequzzaman, geology professor at Georgia Southwestern State University and originally from Bangladesh, says two questions must be asked about the use of rainwater harvesting  for Bangladesh: (1) is it financially viable for rural populations, and (2) does the rainwater harvested meet the quality for drinking water?  Also, in tropical countries like Bangladesh and 1:country-region w:st="on">India, rainfall comes intensely during the monsoon period between April and September. A UN Environment Program study conducted in 1982 showed that when harvesting monsoon rains with an average rainfall of 72 inches in 12 hours, enough water could be collected in a 1,100-gallon storage tank to last a six-member family for 45 days.[70]   

 

While rainwater in developed industrial areas such as the United States and Europe may contain numerous chemicals, rainwater in rural areas is generally free of industrial pollution and safe for drinking. However, even in rural areas, rainwater will contain atmospheric gases along with sediments, dust, aerosols, particulates and other gases that result from fossil fuel burning.  Hence all rainwater requires a purification / distillation system that will remove sediments and harmful chemicals.  Some residents in Portland, Oregon have developed a rainwater harvesting system based on the “Texas Guide to Rainwater Harvesting.”  The system costs less than $1500 to install and comprises a 1500-gallon plastic cistern, a 1/12 horsepower shallow-well pump, plastic piping, two particulate filters, an ultraviolet light sterilizer, a screen to cover the cistern, a 20-gallon water storage tank and a reduced pressure backflow prevention device.[71] The same harvesting system could be produced much more cheaply in Bangladesh using indigenous products.  It is a solution that will avert some of the potential problems in using ponds for water storage.

 

Rainwater has several advantages:  It is naturally soft, in contrast to well water. (2) It contains no dissolved minerals or salts. (3)  It is free of chemical treatment. (4) It is a reliable source of water for households in most regions of the world. Countries like Egypt, Libya and other Middle Eastern countries with scant rainfall would be exceptions.  Rainwater can supplement other sources of locally provided water. It can be used for irrigation as well as for household use, including for drinking.

 

Bangladesh is faced with seemingly insurmountable water-related problems, including drought, flooding, arsenic contamination of ground water, and surface water pollution through bacteria and industrial contaminants, including fertilizer and pesticides. While rainwater may not solve all the water problems of Bangladesh, it could certainly lessen the demand for both surface and ground water.  The government of Bangladesh should immediately institute programs to provide rainwater harvesting systems to rural villagers along the lines of those used in Portland, Oregon, so that the people’s fundamental right to safe drinking water is achieved.

 

 

B.        Check Dams

The World Commission on Dams (WCD), after extensive study, determined that alternatives do exist to large dams, which wreak unbounded and irreparable ecological/environmental damage in their vicinity.  The Commission assessed what other ways existed that would meet the same needs of the people, specifically in the areas of agriculture, energy, water supply and flood control.[72] According to the WCD, demand-side management has “significant untapped and universal potential and provides a major opportunity to reduce water stress.”  This would include reduced water consumption, recycling of water, use of technology to develop more efficient use of water, reduction of water leakage, and improving water system maintenance.[73]  In agriculture, for example, rainwater harvesting and groundwater recharging can be maximally utilized. Irrigation systems can be more efficiently maintained, including regular sediment flushing. Controlling and reclaiming saline land in conjunction with an integrated approach to managing both surface and ground water is suggested.   Control of leakage in canals can save up to 14.8 billion square meters of water annually.  Crops grown in arid areas should be those that demand less water and that can be watered using micro-irrigation, i.e., drip systems. Technology should be developed so as to enable the re-use of irrigation drainage water and urban wastewater.   The WCD further recommended demand-side management (DSM) of water, with reference to high per capita consumption of countries such as the United States, where consumption through conservation could be reduced by 50 percent. Likewise, electricity in high consumption countries can be substantially reduced.  In place of water as an energy source, alternative methods are in the literature, such as biomass, wind, solar, geothermal and ocean energy.  To date, wind energy is the most rapidly spreading alternative energy source.   Thus, demand-side management measures to reduce water could involve applying tariffs that start low and rise for increasingly higher levels of consumption.  Pit latrines and septic tanks can further save on water demand.  Supply-side alternatives include reducing leakages, rainwater harvesting via rooftops, storage tanks and ponds, to be used as domestic water supply sources. Finally, the recycling of wastewater should be undertaken for use in agricultural, groundwater recharging and industry.[74] To avert disastrous effects of floods, the WCD suggests infiltration trenches, detention basins, infiltration ponds, retention ponds, and wetland areas to catch runoff.  Extension afforestation (or reforestation where trees once grew along river banks) should be started immediately, along with abandoning of intensive agriculture, as it leads to soil erosion and landslides. Simple techniques such as these can avert many of the more damaging aspects of floods while capturing the positive aspects.  Houses can be made waterproof, and boundary walls can be built around houses as protection against flood waters.[75] 

 

 

A rock check dam

 

 

With regard to social and environmental costs of large dams, the WCD recommends the decommissioning of those dams.  According to the WCD, the main force driving the World Bank to fund construction of large dams around the world is economic. Yet in nearly all cases, the projected benefits were not met and/or were outweighed by non-projected costs. This was done in all instances without inclusion of the affected people.  Henceforth the affected indigenous peoples must participate in any large dam projects that will vastly affect their lives and livelihoods. Their voice must be heard above the corporate voices of multinational companies forever on the march for more money.

 

 

C.        Ponds and Tanks

Ponds are required to store rainwater to use in the dry season. Saving rainwater in vessels is impractical.  A good storage solution is to build small ponds at frequent intervals. However, ponds also bring problems. Land is required to build the ponds. Land is not always available in all rural areas. Ponds will be subject to surface run-off water that in Bangladesh presently carries numerous chemical pollutants and harmful bacteria. These would include chemical fertilizer, pesticides, cow manure, sediments, sewage, aerosol fallout, detergents, and decaying plants.[76]  If banks are built around the ponds, however, the invasion of surface water can be reduced. Unless ponds are covered, substantial water will be lost to evaporation.  Last, ponds will be connected to groundwater flow and hence face contamination from groundwater chemicals. In Bangladesh, this would be arsenic.  Hence, it is not enough to simply construct ponds. Further steps must be taken to protect the purity of the water stored in those ponds.

 

 

Pond in Tasmania

 

Mudiyanur Tank

Mudiyanur tank in Mudiyanur village, Kolar district, Karanataka, South India, provides water to seven villages.  It is very old – about 1,000 years. It is hence in poor condition and needs desilting. It catches the rainwater year round, but presently the tank runs dry by February – a good three months before the annual monsoon rains.  Its water is distributed to the seven villages through an ancient irrigation system that the villagers swear by.  Next to the tank is a temple built to the goddess Chowdeswari. The adjacent land comprising the seven villages takes up about 250 acres, which are occupied by more than 900 farmers.  The land is divided into seven segments, with each farmer having a plot of land in each segment.[77]  A council of elders from the villages supervises the work surrounding the tank. One tier constitutes selected representatives from each caste of each village. The second tier constitutes a total of three village functionaries from the scheduled caste in Mudiyanur village.  This system is ancient and is deeply believed in by all the villagers. The first functionary guards the villages, implements the orders of the council, makes announcements about the tank water, and organizes religious festivals and prayer services at the adjacent temple. The second functionary is responsible for the equitable distribution of the water from the tank to the people. He also protects the crops from thieves and cattle. He repairs leaks in the tank, and serves as the information source for all the farmers. The third functionary visits the homes of all the villagers to collect dues from the farmers to pay for providing these water services.  As payment, the three functionaries receive in-kind goods at the end of the harvesting, generally in the form of rice.

 

Why has this unique water distribution system survived for more than 1,000 years?  The villagers respond by saying, “Chowdeswari!” The people from all seven villages come to the temple to worship the goddess, and this has kept the community strong and close.[78] While land ownership has changed over the decades, but the water management system remains the same as it was 1,000 years ago. Ten to twenty percent of the landowners are women – many of them widows.  Although there is less rain, and reduced flow of irrigation water, although silt accumulates steadily with resulting less water available, yet the villagers say they will continue to manage the tank and the water irrigation system as they have done for the past one thousand years.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 An oldwater storage tank in the Ganges Valley, India

 

 Clay Pots

In Lake Magadi, southwest of Nairobi, the Intermediate Technology Development Group (IDTG) taught the local women to construct big clay pots for storing water. First the women construct the foundation with clay and place a big bag of manure on the foundation. The bag is smeared with a mixture of sand and cement and left to dry. This process is repeated every day, until at the end of the week the women remove the bag of manure and have a big round pot. It is kept full of water for three weeks, after which it becomes crack-proof. Each pot holds 2,100 litres of water. They are built outside the primary schools in the Magadi area.[79]  Local women bring water by carrying it or by donkey and pour it in the clay pot for storage. All rainwater is collected from the roof of the schools.  Previously these pots were built next to each home in a village. However, this meant that only one family was served. By placing the pots in front of schools, many more people derive benefit. 

 

The IDTG teaches women other skills. For example, women put two 15-litre cans on a donkey for fetching water.  The IDTG has shown the women that if loaded properly, one donkey can in fact carry up to 80 litres of water.  As 80 litres will serve several homes, some of the village women have formed teams or water cooperatives.  One woman will take ten donkeys and fetch water for all other women in the group. This way one woman may go for water only every three weeks. The labor is divided and shared, and women save hours of time to finish other domestic chores.  While getting water by donkey has helped, it is not the final answer. Still the women of Magada must walk many hours to bring water to their village.

 

The village of Katchama, in Ethiopia, has just one pond to accommodate 4,000 people.  The water will last only two-three weeks, after which the villagers will have no choice but to walk 12 hours to the Awash river to bring water back to the village, so they survive a little longer. The government helps to some extent by building ponds. But far more ponds are required. The villagers themselves need to learn how to build their ponds. It will give them a sense of pride, and they will take care of what they themselves have created. 

 

According to ecologist Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, it is essential for surface water to be conserved for afforestation to succeed.  The method is to increase existing storage systems and create new systems.  The cheapest method is to build small ponds and lakes – man-made lakes, for storing water.  These ponds and lakes should be built in those places where the surface water flows; for example, at that point where rivulets from the rainwater converge. This point of convergence is the ideal spot for a lake or small pond. Sarkar says: “The bigger the catchment area, the bigger the number of rivulets, so the bigger the pond or lake.”[80]   For construction, a rectangular area should be selected. The soil dug out of the hole should be placed around the periphery to form slopes and ridges. The lakes and ponds should be just five feet deep so as to avoid accidental drowning.  A boundary wall should encircle the pond to keep out animals.  Along the boundary wall plants should be grown, and inside the wall palm trees should be planted.  As has been done in Israel, Iran, Japan and many other countries, underground tunnels can be dug to direct other water sources to the lake. 

 

Sarkar talks about five types of plants that should be grown around lakes:  slope plants, boundary plants, wire plants, aquatic plants and surface plants.  Slope plants include pineapple, asparagus, aloe vera, eggplant and chili.  These plants conserve water and stop erosion of soil. They also will provide income for local populations.  Slope plants should be planted in symmetrical, horizontal lines to allow the water to travel always towards the lake.[81] It is also good to build terraces around the pond because they prevent the run-off of surface water and check soil erosion.  Boundary plants include palm trees and creepers of flowers, vegetables and fruits. Coconut trees can be planted around lakes as well as date palms and banana trees.  Along the boundary walls creeper plants should be grown, such as beans, squash, pumpkin, melon, passion fruit and grapes.  Thorny and non-thorny aquatic plants such as lotus and Victoria regina should be grown in the water. The lotus produces vegetables to eat and provides organic matter to the water.  All these plants will create beauty in and around the ponds, as well as help to conserve the water therein. Pisciculture should be developed in ponds and lakes. The fish help to keep the water clean because their breathing creates water and carbon dioxide.  Their breathing also keeps the water at a constant level.  If many fish live in a lake, thousands of gallons of water will be added to the lake over time.  In normal areas the depth of ponds can be five feet. However, in desert areas where there is intense evaporation, the depth should be ten feet. 

 

Desalination

Desalination of saline water, specifically seawater, brackish water and wastewater is becoming more common due to lack of underground water supplies. The global market for desalinized water is around $35 billion annually, and this figure is expected to double over the next 15 years.[82]  In 2002 there were about 12,500 desalination plants around the world, predominantly located in Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait, along with Libya and Algeria in northern Africa.[83]  In the United States both California and Florida produce desalinated water, as these two states face chronic water shortage relative to their populations. The ongoing concern, however, with desalination is the toxic chemical by-product of desalination.

 

Current methods of desalination include Reverse Osmosis (RO), Multi-Effect Distillation (MED) and Multi-stage Flash Distillation (MSF).  MSF is used primarily in the Middle East.[84]  Reverse Osmosis is presently considered as the most advantageous method of desalination because it requires the least energy to produce, i.e., 6 kilowatts per hour of electricity is required for each cubic meter of drinking water.  The Gulf States use dual-purpose power and desalination plants. Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority now see desalinated water as the solution to their chronic water shortage problems.  Desalination plants are presently being constructed in Tunis, Italy, Spain, Cyprus, Malta, South Africa, Algeria, Morocco, South Korea and the Philippines.[85]

 

Maintaining Ecological Systems

Several hundred years ago, many desert regions of today were covered with trees and biological diversity. But then the local people as well as businessmen cut down so many trees, leading to severe depletion of subterranean water, which has caused the deserts to spread.  Multiple problems arise with the felling of trees. First, the carbon dioxide rises because there are fewer plants to absorb it. This leads directly to warmer atmospheric temperatures.  Warmer temperatures lead to glacial melting, as is happening now at rates unprecedented since the last ice age.  Rivers reduce their flow or dry up. Thus, the riparian lands along rivers also dry up and are transformed into desert, as is the case with the Nile and the Ganges rivers.  In desert conditions, organic processes in the soil cease, micro-organisms and worms die, causing organic matter to break down as it loses the ability to retain water.  The soil-making process comes to a halt.[86] 

 

Three thousand years ago, central Rarh in West Bengal was a land of abundant flora and fauna and large rivers.  Even in 1950, there were many dense forests in the area. But today, there are hardly any trees or animals, and the rivers have nearly dried up. The soil is barren; it contains few worms and micro-organisms, and hence the organic material critical in serving as a sponge to retain water is nearly non-existent.  Annual rains wash away the top soil, leaving coarse, sandy soil underneath. As a result, the region is subject to severe soil erosion and flash floods.  To bring about transformation in Rahr, Libya, Egypt, Saudi and UAE, a massive afforestation program must be started. The approach should be two-phased:  In Phase 1, fast-growing trees that grow to maximum height within two years should be planted.  Examples of such trees would be large screwpine, drumstick, red sandalwood, agave, and certain varieties of jackfruit. In Phase 2, slow-growing trees like teak should be planted and then harvested after 30 years.  The fast-growing trees can be cut after three years to provide income for local people.  Thus, if there is a constant, perpetual cycle of planting fast-growing and long-growing trees that will provide green cover, this cycle can reverse the desertification process. Other plants particularly appropriate for countering desertification must be planted, such as jojoba and cacti.  Jojoba contains oil which can be used in place of diesel oil.[87] 

Wetlands

 

Wetlands are an example of a naturally occurring ecological system whose value appears unrecognized by many in the corporate world.  Wetlands act as flood storage, nutrient cycling and pollutant trapping.  In Iraq, freshwater lakes, reed beds and marshes used to cover thousands of miles – from Basra in the south up to Baghdad.  Fifty thousand people relied on the marsh water for sustenance, for survival. Today these marshlands are dry, with the waters of the Euphrates diverted into canals and tanks.  Many hydrological engineers felt this was the correct step to take. They felt that water going into the marshland was wasted water.  By the year 2003, the marshlands of ountry-region w:st="on">Iraq had become “dry, salt-encrusted wasteland.”[88]  However, in the last three years, some of the Marsh Arabs have returned to their land and are finding ways to bring water back to convert the wasteland back into valuable soil.  In fact, restoration of wetlands is becoming a growth industry globally. Oases that had dried up and become salt- encrusted are now being revived by bringing nearby subterranean water.  Once again the flora and fauna are returning and indigenous fish returned to the ponds.  

 

 

Coordinated Cooperation and Cooperativization

Vandana Shiva in her book, Water Wars, provides a poignant example of contrasting conduct with regard to water. On the train from Delhi to Jaipur people in her train compartment purchased Pepsi’s Aquafina bottled water. In Jaipur, however, was a different culture. During the height of the drought season, small thatched huts called Jal mandirs (water temples) emerged for the sole purpose of storing precious water in earthen pots, so as to provide thirsty people passing by.  The water was offered for free. It is an ancient tradition.  On the one hand is the culture of spontaneous coordinated cooperation and giving when seeing the need of human beings. On the other hand is the audacity of a few men to use their wealth to purchase the earth’s water supplies and turn around and sell that water in bottles for hefty profits. The poorest of the poor will not drink.  For them, only the kindness of the Jai Mandirs will give them sustenance. . 

 

We need to study the management of coastal aquifers, the impact of water resources management on urban, rural and agricultural economic development, the use of non-renewable groundwater resources – such as in Libya, and develop integrated management of surface and groundwater resources.  We need to further research on reduction of evaporation and leaks in extant water systems, water harvesting and wadi management, along with improving water use efficiency and water recycling. The ultimate goal would be to create, as far as possible, bioregional, sustainable communities. The creation of such communities will hinge firstly on water availability and how to extract the water for the maximum benefit of the local people and the entire local biodiversity.

 

Human beings need to become more humble with regard to nature, with regard to the entire ecosystem, and need to humbly look at their own part in that biodiversity, see the role that they are to play, see how they are to not harm or destroy but rather to support every other part of that ecosystem.   Perhaps the greatest danger facing humanity today is the corporations, their owners and CEOs, who will stop at nothing to make a profit, who will quickly destroy the environment, the extant water and future water sources, if it means they can make money now.  So long as water remains in the hands of blood-sucking corporations, a global water crisis is imminent. But, if the common people can wrest the water from the corporations and take over its control, management and rational distribution, then a water crisis can be averted entirely.  Local people can stop growing water-guzzling “cash” crops for export to imperialist countries and begin growing local crops for local people.  As huge quantities of water are required to feed cattle so as to provide animals for human consumption, we can promote a vegetarian lifestyle worldwide that will save enormous quantities of water.  We can learn about recycling of water.  To avoid exploitative prices charged by corporations on what should be a fundamental right to water, local people need to form local water cooperatives, so that amounts charged for water to residents will be compatible with people’s purchasing power. We need to start far-reaching education programs so that every citizen of every country knows the art of conserving water every minute of the day.  Before building any dam, the local affected communities must be consulted and agree to the proposal.  We need to study and then teach the people about scientific crop management. For example, fruit trees can store a large amount of water in their roots and hence should be planted along riverbanks and near rice paddies so as to help conserve the water.  Human beings have cut down thousands or millions of trees that used to grow along riverbanks, causing the rivers to dry up. The forest trees retained the river water in their root systems and released it in a controlled manner, which allowed the river waters to flow regularly in ecological equipoise. Hence, the critical value of afforestation along all water bodies – ponds and rivers.  We need to begin immediate water conservation programs that will double the existing surface water while simultaneously planning for a longer-term tenfold increase.[89]  It requires a decentralized, cooperative approach to water management and water distribution. There is no other solution.  We need to create ponds, tanks, lakes, rivers and reservoirs for rainwater storage, and increase the size and depth of existing storage facilities.  How do we increase the amount of existing water ten times?  We increase the number of rows of plants around each water storage system five times, and then reduce the distance between each plant by half.  And as a rule, surface water should be utilized for human needs so as to preserve subterranean water resources.   It is a mammoth task that lies ahead.  As Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar has stated:

 

“You must prepare yourselves. The sphere of knowledge, the span of knowledge and the expansion of knowledge start with you. Humanity is waiting for you. You know what you are and what the world expects from you. You have to solve all the problems in the world today. You should prepare detailed plans and programs and act accordingly. You must be the vanguard.”

 

Let no one be weeping for water

 

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