The Elixir of Life
'Tis a little thingTo give a cup of water; yet its draughtEnvironmentalists and futurists now say that the world needs to focus on its precious water resources. That fundamental element that brings and sustains life, in great paucity in some geographic areas of the world, more abundant in others, but threatened in its resourceful stability by mankind's wastefulness in developed countries, oblivious neglect in developing countries; conditions born of arrogance on the one hand, desperate need on the other.
Of cool refreshment drained by fevered lips,
May give a shock of pleasure to the frame
More exquisite than when nectarian juice
Renews the joy of life in happiest hours.
- Thomas Noon Talfourd, Ion, Act i, sc. 1.
It's estimated that 2.6 billion people worldwide, roughly half the world's population, lack access to basic sanitation. In undeveloped countries, in towns and villages millions of people defecate and urinate in areas close to their water supplies, severely compromising their health. Diarrhea kills 1.8 million children each year around the world. Almost 50% of the populations of developing countries suffer health problems as a result of poor sanitation and lack of water.
The United Nations has declared 2008 to be the "International Year for Sanitation". The UN's sanitation target identifies water access as its highest priority, followed by teaching proper sanitation, as basic as building covered pit latrines, and encouraging people (already facing water shortages) to recognize the health expedience of hand-washing. This is where first-world, developed countries, which have not themselves yet recognized the dire need to conserve and protect their water supplies, will have to commit to finding a solution for water-deficient countries.
In North America, underground supplies from ancient aquifers, otherwise seen as back-up supplies when needed have been exhausted in some instances by having been pumped by farmers during catastrophic droughts like the dustbowl 1930s, for irrigation to save their fields and crops. The Florida Everglades has seen a deterioration in its water levels as they've been pumped for irrigation throughout the state, for vast fields of sugarcane crops, for huge livestock ranches.
The estimation is that Canada is blessed with 7% of the world's renewable fresh water supply; natural supplies of water both above and underground replenished through precipitation. The mighty Amazon river and its plentiful tributaries places Brazil in first place, Russia second, while Canada shares third place with China, with the United States, in fifth place with 6.4% of the world's fresh renewable water, just behind fourth-place Indonesia at 6.5%.
Canada has more dams and water diversion projects than any other country in the world. A 1985 report, costing $1.5 million on cross-country public hearings pointed out that the government of Canada should improve its poorly-managed fresh water supply. The report urged the federal government and the provinces to create an overarching national water policy in anticipation of foreign demand for bulk exports of Canadian water.
In Canada, federal responsibility over water involves pollution control, fisheries oversight, navigation and water on federal lands. The provinces exercise control over most water in Canada, but the federal government maintains jurisdiction over treaties and disputes with respect to rivers and lakes straddling international and national boundaries.
Canadians are water-wasteful. We view ourselves as having water in abundance, and think nothing of using more than we actually require. Canadian consumers don't pay for the water we use, only for the cost of treating and delivering the water; the civic infrastructure of water usage. Industry within Canada pays a notional amount, not truly representative of the value that water has to its needs.
Drinking and wastewater in Canada is managed publicly, through municipalities, with oversight by the provinces. Most of the water used in Canada is through agricultural and industrial use; households consume roughly 10%. That precious, life-giving, life-sustaining, economy-enriching resource is used casually, its presence and usefulness taken for granted, a national inheritance.
We share our continent with a resource-hungry neighbour whose future needs might very well increase pressure on our own water supplies, among other raw resources. While a huge state in the U.S. like California has recognized it has a problem with water shortages and has enacted useful coping legislation on the environment, the California lifestyle remains enormously wasteful of a resource the state has in scarce supply.
Las Vegas is located within a geographical desert, yet almost two million people live in greater Las Vegas, while six thousand monthly arrivals swell the population even further. Jobs are plentiful, taxes low and the natural environment is irresistible. With an annual rainfall of 10 centimetres, the average citizen consumes about 870 litres of water each day. 70% of residential water is used to water house-proud lawns and gardens, to fill pools and wash cars.
Fully 40 million-plus visitors come to the city each year for recreational play. Housing and hotel developers agitate continually for additional water to accommodate both the increasing population and the city's tourism and recreation industry. There are 60 golf courses in the region, considered inadequate to their need. Xericulture is being promoted by concerned environmentalists, but residents remain disinterested.
Nevada and Arizona represent another drought region. While water is not specifically part of the NAFTA agreement, there is deep suspicion among some environmental activist and natural-resource-sovereigntists that it will eventually be placed on the agenda, to Canada's detriment. Canadians will inevitably find themselves short of the resource which could conceivably be piped or shipped off to foreign parts to sustain a truly unsustainable way of life.
"We must have a debate in this country," says Maude Barlow whose book Blue Gold: The Battle Against Corporate Theft of the World's Water has sounded an alarm. "What's the right thing to do in sharing our water? Do we hand it over to corporations? Polls show that the vast majority of Canadians believe our water is a public trust and should be left here and not commercialized.
"If we start exporting water for commercial purposes, it will go to the places that can afford to buy it and not the places that need it. It will go to allow Americans to be horrible water guzzlers, have their million-plus swimming pools in California, water their golf courses and have their Las Vegas-type cities in the desert. "If you're really helping people in need, that's different. But if you're helping sustain a way of life that is not sustainable, I deeply disagree with it." And who wouldn't, considered rationally?
"I don't think it's an exaggeration to say the U.S. is running out of water," says Tim Downs, an environmental and water specialist at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.
"Because of NAFTA, there has been a rapid growth in population and in industrial production along the border" according to Mr. Downs. "Groundwater in that region is being depleted but more people are being attracted there because of economic growth. In some places population growth is 4% a year, suggesting a potential for doubling population in less than 20 years."
Frank Quinn, former research director for the Currents of Change Team suggests that the U.S. will pipe water down from Alaska, before approaching Canada. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Alaska holds one-third of available U.S. water, and is the only jurisdiction in North America allowing sales of bulk water. "Alaska would be happy to do that, but it won't be free", he says.
Clearly, it's past time that the governments of Canada, federal and provincial, have a serious look at the future of this country's water supplies. The current government has made a start by enacting new regulations against marine pollution; one of the most wide-reaching regulations prohibiting all sewage dumping, from large ships to houseboats. That anti-dumping regulation is a protective measure to maintain quality of our supply, but far more is required to ensure we will always have the quantity we require.
We need to conserve and reserve our fresh water resources. Whether, in the future, this country considers it politically necessary to export bulk water it will only be feasible if there are guarantees that the water will not be wasted. And even then exports would have to identify quantities that would not imperil Canadians' own fresh-water needs. Past time to have a serious, responsible look at this critical issue. Much depends upon it.
Waste brings woe - Robert Greene, Sonnet
Labels: Canada-US Relations, Environment, Political Realities
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, May 09, 2007
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