I am haunted by waters. Norman Maclean
If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does. Margaret Atwood
Human nature is like water. It takes the shape of its container. Wallace Stevens
Dip him in the river who loves water. William Blake
He liked the darkness, but this was oppressing. It almost flooded his being. Dean F. Wilson
Water, like love, is good at finding where it’s meant to be. Corinne Beenfield
By early light I am asleep in a nightmare about drowning in the Flood. Billy Collins
The UN had a good week in some key aspects, including an excellent Arria Formula event on threats to UN peacekeepers from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and a political declaration adopted by the General Assembly affirming the need for “Equitable Global Access to COVID-19 Vaccines” (click here) at a time when “vaccine nationalism” is only slowly giving way to a more generous – if also economically self-interested — disposition on vaccine distribution, including to those nations which have still to administer a single shot.
It was also a week when the UN assessed its commitment to ensuring freshwater access to the millions of people for whom such access is tenuous at best. On World Water Day, many sectors within the UN system paused to weigh responsibilities to the water and sanitation goals which are key both to sustainable development and to addressing the “conflict multiplier” which water increasingly represents as, in too many communities across the globe, access to safe water has become a luxury increasingly elusive to secure though ultimately more precious than silver or gold.
As the president of the UN Economic and Social Council, Ambassador Akram of Pakistan warned this week, at our current rate half the world’s population will likely suffer from severe water stress by the year 2050. This was perhaps our most cited comment (on Twitter) in the past week, a testament to the misery, displacement and potential conflict which diplomats and the larger policy community recognize is looming on our collective horizon if we cannot find the urgent means to ensure safe and equitable water access. We are reminded every day of the many people worldwide for whom mere hand-washing in the midst of a pandemic creates harsh water use choices, others for whom the dignity of adequate sanitation remains a distant dream. And as noted with regularity by our colleague in El Salvador, Marta Benavides, our response at policy level is often to talk too much and change too little. Water, despite what we wish to believe, is no longer “finding where it needs to be,” and we are yet doing too little to help restore lifegiving pathways.
Most of those who would read weekly missives such as this one don’t need to be reminded of the central role water plays in our contemporary world as the largest repositories of fresh water on our planet – the polar ice caps – continue to melt into the sea at unheard of rates, and as climate change imposes alternating jolts of flooding and drought on many millions of people living in poverty, undermining their food security and setting many on uncertain journeys to find places where this most basic of needs can be procured, albeit in unfamiliar and even hostile contexts.
In many of our so-called developed countries, water-related imagery often infuses our artistic and unconscious lives though, as a pragmatic resource, we have largely taken it for granted. While we occasionally recognize that vast differences in water quality exist in communities across a country like the US, we nevertheless anticipate that what flows from our taps remains both reliable and relatively safe, an entitlement of sorts for which there is simply no equivalent in war-torn or economically stressed communities. Indeed, we know here that the water we have available for our own sanitation purposes is generally (and often needlessly) higher in quality than any water available at all to families in communities habitually threatened by the twin killers of flooding and drought.
There are “solutions” of sort for countries and communities facing water scarcity but they are often complex. Moving water from where it is abundant to where it is lacking is a herculean task as is funding and installing technologies to desalinate sea water for coastal communities. But NGOs and state partners are making welcome progress in creating community-based solutions to elevate water abundance – including catchment capacity to ensure that water availability remains accessible. Lamentably, such solutions face obstacles from the shifting modalities of climate change to unregulated industries in our broken economies that raise the stakes such that water “caught” is often dangerous for personal use. In too many places, the “slide” of water, both of access and quality, continues unabated. A “dip in the river” in too many places is less a refreshing interlude and more an invitation to deadly disease.
Still, there is much that we in the “water entitled” world can do to sharpen our attentiveness to water-related concerns while contributing to a safe water environment for others. Part of this relates to, as already noted, our personal water uses: watering less, flushing less, fixing leaks, restricting uses of toxic fertilizer and other products that are likely to enter – and degrade – our water supply. One could add to this measures to mitigate the diverse impacts of climate change on our farms and ice caps – walking rather than driving to errands, shifting to green energy sources, doing more to restore watersheds or eliminate the river toxins that lead to ocean pollution (and fund those who lead on this work). Our water savings may not make a dent in other, drought-stricken areas of the world, but greater water-use consciousness can lead to support for policies and practices that offer some tangible hope for the drought-affected.
But another aspect of our responsibility is related to an issue that we are often loath to discuss in these parts – our patterns of consumption – specifically consumption related to water demand, the uses beyond our sight, beyond our attention, even beyond our comprehension. For those of you who have the time and interest, I urges you to click here for the website of Water Calculator which, along with sites such Foodnorthwest.org provides hard data on water usage and wastewater which accompanies the production of some of our most common consumer items. From automobiles and leather goods to beef production and avocados, the vast quantities of water needed to produce our personal transportation and the items we voraciously pull from the shelves of our local big-box stores, can be shocking.
One wonders: Would we willingly adjust our consumption patters if we knew that the leather shoes we have been coveting required an average of 3,626 gallons of water to produce? Would we be so quick to replace our bed sheets if we recognized that an average of 2,839 gallons of water were required to make them soft and attractive? Would we adjust our eating habits if we knew that it takes as much as 450 gallons of water to prepare one cow for the grilling of steaks or the sandwiches of “we have the meats” Arby’s? And would it matter if we were to grasp that so much of what we in the “developed” world now consume is produced in communities which themselves are often water insecure, products made by the hands of women and men who use more water at work than they and their communities might ever be able to access in their non-working hours? And, if they were able to access it, knowing that it might well have been made more toxic through runoff/effluence from the very facilities which pay their often-meager wages?
These loops represent ethical and even spiritual dilemmas both “haunting” and unsustainable. As many of you recognize, this is the season of Passover for Jews and Holy Week for Christians, a time to celebrate divine gifts but also to reclaim the responsibilities commensurate with those gifts. As one of my good colleagues put it, “No Sunday is sacred until we all have access to safe water and sanitation.” This is not an uncomplicated aspiration, to be sure, but it is an important one, and could well be a sacred one. Those of us who can choose to over-water our plants, luxuriate in our showers, and indulge in water-saturated consumption with impunity could stand to learn some new habits, habits which acknowledge our collective, growing water scarcity with grave implications for human health and global tension.
In a time when what relatively little fresh water remains threatens to be commodified, when this “global public good” is in danger of becoming one more resource to be controlled by wealthy individuals and states, we need to reset our water priorities at policy and personal levels without delay. If we fail to do so, our ability to prevent our conflicts, feed our populations and protect our people from pandemics and other diseases will become increasingly impaired. We are at a critical moment now regarding this most fundamental of resources. Any further slide in access and quality jeopardizes many and ultimately serves the interests of none.
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