(2008) No one can survive without water; water gives our planet life. Even though 70% of the surface of our planet is water, "the world is running out of fresh water."

Annually two million people, mostly children, die from water-borne diseases. From interviews with scores of experts, scientists, journalists, authors, and environmental activists around the world, director Irena Salina has documented the crisis of accessibility to clean water for billions of people along with proposals to make water healthy and plentiful for everyone.

In the US, where we take water for granted, an estimated 40% of viruses are passes along through our drinking water. Chemicals, toxins, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics are flushed down toilets only to end up recycled in water coming out of the tap. One of the most prevalent chemicals found in our water supply is Atrazine, a herbicide, which has been shown to demasculate frogs; though Europe has banned its use, the Bush administration saw no cause for alarm.

Bottled (commoditized) water, as attorney Erik Olson points out, is less regulated than tap water, and in many instances is (false advertising) nothing more than tap water. Magician/comedian Penn Gillette demonstrates how easily people can be fooled into believing cheap, ordinary water from a hose tastes better than it is and be willing to pay a lot more for it when served from a bottle with a fancy French name.

Companies such as Coca Cola, Pepsi, and Nestlé pump water from wells, such as happened in Michigan, depleting the water table, resulting in "significant adverse effects" on landowners, without having to pay for the water, a public resource, which is like sunlight or air, "a transient gift on Earth for life." Though a Michigan judge initially ruled against Nestlé that water could not be removed from wells locally to be sold elsewhere, the company eventually won on appeals to continue pumping water and drilling additional wells.

Elsewhere with the connivance of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, using debt to take over national-government decision making, multinationals, such as Suez and Vivendi, are privatizing and commercializing water resources and systems: whoever owns water for survival owns the people.

In Bolivia (see how this theme as the world's most precious resource plays in the 007 movie Quantum of Solace) people were excluded from their source of potable water when the system was privatized, forced on the government by the World Bank. The politically powerful obtain their water from treatment plants paid for with expensive loans, leaving the impoverished masses with water polluted by raw sewage and downstream from slaughterhouses, chemical plants, and mines.

In South Africa the natural waterways are often contaminated, but the poorest people cannot afford the tablets necessary to make the water safe for drinking. Pre-paid meters have been installed for tap water to make usage more accountable and dependent on the ability to pay by so-called nonprofit, charitable companies, leaving the destitute without a choice.

In India, as physicist and environmental activist Vandana Shiva explains, the flow of the Ganges is being interrupted by the Suez company, selling the water to Delhi citizens. Dam construction (often funded by the World Bank and IMF) displaces people, as huge projects in China and Africa have forced millions from their homes and off their land, leaving them powerless when promises of compensation are ignored.

Yet technological solutions are available, such as a device that disinfects water for small communities (an alternative to expensive, centralized distribution systems), capable of providing ten liters per person every day for two dollars a year. Rather than large-scale developments, localized projects would be more cost-effective. "Water for people, not for profit," proclaims a banner during a protest in Washington, DC.

The ancient wisdom of water conservation and rainwater harvesting need to be reintroduced to villages. Taking from nature without returning to nature is a breaking of the holy order of water. Without clean, fresh water, we will all die. There is no substitute.

A proposed amendment, Article 31, to the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads: "Everyone has the right to clean and accessible water, adequate for the health and well-being of the individual and family, and no one shall be deprived of such access or quality of water due to individual economic circumstance." That's a noble thought, but while corporate greed along with a lack of political will among governments deserve much of the blame, the documentary diluted its objectivity by irresponsibly omitting any mention of overpopulation as a principal cause of the strains on the world's resources, including water.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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