The earth can’t sustain itself without water. It is a crucial resource to life, and our world’s supply is severely at risk. Many of us take clean, accessible water for granted every time we turn on the tap to get a drink or wash our hands, but in other regions of our planet, families are grateful each time they can fill up a bucket from the village tap. It is a difficult situation when there is abundance in some places and extreme scarcity in others. It raises the argument, who owns the water? Can any one company or country claim certain bodies of water as their own? And can anyone use it? Questions like these lead us to understand dealing with a resource everyone on the planet needs is a difficult situation. Major companies work to control the natural water sources and use them for financial benefit, ignoring the citizens and polluting the water they give back. This relationship is seen throughout the world, creating a social strain between hardworking citizens of small villages and the large powerful corporations that can overpower their forces. Often, these businesses have government support, making them even more difficult to deal and compromise with. The world needs to work together to protect the environment while making clean water available for everyone. This means that these large corporations, governments, communities and each individual needs to come together for a solution to this worldwide crisis. This issue is not something you can push aside- water is something no one can live without.
Water is a $400 billion dollar global industry; the third largest behind electricity and oil. Global Corporations work to privatize water, prioritizing profits over the availability of clean water for people and the environment. In the past water has been delivered as a public service by government. In the past ten years, 3 major water companies have started delivering water on a profit basis. These companies are Thames Water, Vivendi, and Suez. Most other water companies are owned in part by them. They think that the solution to solving this water crisis involves treating water as any other sellable good. This leads to selling water to who will buy it, NOT to those who need it. These companies need to realize that you can’t provide quality water to a population if you are also providing profit to your investors.
Developing countries across the world are forced to give up control of their basic water systems that they depend on. These companies set up factories by those bodies of water to purify and use the water, but none gets back to the community it was taken from, unless they can afford it. Many of these poorer villages have but one water source they are near to use, and if they can not afford a tap, where can they go? They must take the best water they can find, which is typically full of pollutants by this point from these factories. The private companies are making so much profit from this water that it does not concern them. They were first welcomed into the developing countries, with the belief that the companies could help these poor communities. But instead they took water, raised prices and cut the poor people off. In the town of Plachimada, in India, a Coca-Cola plant was opened to use the water. No only did they take the village’s water, but they polluted the remaining water supply, poisoned the land, and gave nothing back to the citizens. They also took their manufacturing waste, with toxic levels of lead, and gave to the villagers as “bio-fertilizer.” The villagers fought back with protests and eventually the plant was closed.
It may seem this is all going on far away- but it hits home too. America is part of the water shortage crisis- California has around 20 years left of water, New Mexico has only 10 years. Not only are we dealing with this crisis like the rest of the world, but privatization is affecting our communities. Nestle owns over 70 bottled water brands around the world, many are the most popular American brands. In 2003 Nestle planned to open a water pumping facility in Mecosta County in Michigan near a spring At this facility, they pumped 450 gallons a minute from the spring. It is estimated they made about 1.8 million a day, but didn’t have to pay a single penny to use the water. Nestle took this water, treated it with chemicals, placed it in bottles, and shipped it away. The community was outraged and decided to fight back, taking it to court. They won, but in 2005 Nestle got an appeal and was allowed to pump 218 gallons a minute, or 314000 gallons a day, which was deemed “reasonable.” They also plan to open new wells nearby.
With a problem like this at such a global level, we begin to feel hopeless, asking what can we do? But look at these citizens in both Plachimada and Michigan. They stood up to these companies that were destroying their communities and saw some result. Still, we cannot all provide water for ourselves, we need someone to help purify and protect it for us, but is there anyone that we can depend on? I believe so, with government aide and regulation along with international aide form non-profits and the United Nations, individual effort to conserve water or stand up to those who abuse it, and new innovations to obtain and purify water, we can protect humans right to clean water and provide sanitary, safe, and inexpensive water to people all over the world.
We all realize there are a lot of problems in the world, and each seems truly important, but no problem is as Imperative as this. without Water our planet and our species cannot grow, function, or live. It's been said that "water is life's matter and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water.” This is a fundamental law of nature and if we cannot learn to respect it and our fellow Humans then we will suffer. Let us find a common humanity and learn to put our yearning for it before that of profit, and one day each of us will have a right to safe and clean water.
Bibliography:
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org
http://www.water.org/
Natural Resources Defense Council
Flow: For Love of Water, Documentary
Blue Gold by Maude Barlow
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