Water is fundamental to life. Such a simple axiom is faced with an increasingly serious reality as the lack of drinking water affects 12 out of each 100 people. The scene emerging from the World Water Day, celebrated annually by the UN, is that of a world where water has become another asset that, as an open wound, points to the social differences and regional asymmetries.
Four thousand five hundred children die each day in the world from the lack of water, and women bear the brunt of the scarcity of such a fundamental input. They are the ones who make long journeys to fetch water; and many fight, and give their lives, for the protection of rivers and the land.
We remember Berta Cáceres, in Honduras, who challenged the power of big capital to prevent the construction of the Agua Zarca dam, which would have damaged immeasurably Lenca indigenous people’s lands. Cáceres was brutally murdered for defending this water, the river in which according to the Lenca culture reside the female spirits, the true culprits not having yet paid for her death. Having received the Goldman Environmental Award was of no use to her.
31% of the world’s freshwater resources are located in Latin America. Despite this, a large number of countries suffer from a shortage of potable water and, within those countries, rural areas and marginal and peripheral sectors of large cities are most affected.
This year, the World Water Day emphasized the importance of wastewater sanitation. Only 20 percent of the wastewaters receive adequate treatment in Latin America and the Caribbean. The remaining 80 percent is the cause of contamination of rivers, which contaminate in turn the fields, and cause diseases such as cholera, dysentery, typhoid fever and poliomyelitis among others.
Almost one million people die each year in the world due to the direct or indirect consumption of contaminated water.
Climate change will result in even worse water scarcity, forcing people to leave their homes and land, their habitat having been destroyed. If we also consider that according to UNESCO’s data half of the world’s population is located at less than 200 kilometers from the coasts, we will understand how serious the future of these people can be if, due to climate changes, extreme weather conditions increase.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) as well as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNHCR) warn of a reality that becomes increasingly alarming with the worsening of climate change. According to UNHCR, between 250 and 1000 million human beings could be forced to leave their lands within the next 50 years, due to droughts and floods caused by climate change. Those people, who lack the protection of an international law that recognize their refugee status, outnumber already those displaced by war conflicts.
These are very worrying data affecting us all, that should be recited tirelessly to shake up even the most indifferent consciences.
Globalization is a fact and no one is immune from responsibility or from suffering the consequences of political actions and decisions, no matter how far one may be from where they develop.
It is true that presidents must govern essentially for the well-being of their countries, and that no one can govern for the whole world; yet, there are areas that belong to all of us, regardless of where we live. The atmosphere is one of them. The right to water is one of them. Each of us must feel entitled with the right, and charged with the duty, to fight for and to defend them and, in this manner, defend our planet.
Photo Credits: mhiguera