I got this article from AFP and have reprinted excerpts below; Brown and Caldwell's California Water News first alerted me to it. It's about a new film, "Flow", that takes on water profiteers.
I have not seen this film, but from the story, it seems that this might be akin to a Michael Moore film - some valid points, but with a fair dose of hyperbole. Still, people like filmmaker Irena Salina and activist Maude Barlow are necessary elements of civil society. Like Moore, they serve to poke a sharp stick in our collective eye and keep us from getting too comfortable.
"Flow" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last week. The film by French-born director Irena Salina condemns water profiteering, the World Bank for supporting large-scale water projects that have displaced tens of millions of people, Paris-based Suez and Vivendi Environment for commercializing water systems around the world, and Nestle, the world's largest bottled water seller, for draining watersheds.
I have some complaints about the World Bank. Try micro-financing and micro-projects, guys. Bigger is not always better, unless you're a multi-national engineering firm. I do not necessarily oppose the commercialization of water systems, as long as there is public oversight and there are lifeline rates.
The film also calls for a UN resolution to make access to clean drinking water a human right. But the UN already has. See Peter Gleick's article:
Download human_right_may_07.pdf
The story reports:
"It's a very dangerous trend, at a time when clean drinking water is becoming scarce, even in the United States, the richest country in the world," said Salina in an interview with AFP. "We can't let companies continue to pollute our water. We need strong regulations to stop that, and also to stop them from draining our watersheds for profit," she said.
Along with a collective of activists, she is calling for a binding international treaty to protect the human right to water, as well as tougher local laws to prevent contamination of watersheds and water profiteering.
Her film documents African plumbers secretly reconnecting shantytown water pipes to ensure a community's survival.
This is interesting. When I attended the Third World Water Forum in Kyoto in 2003, one of the sessions was an "open mike" session for community groups. One black South African got up and related an odd story. When South Africa was apartheid, he had free water. But when "his people" (the ANC) took over, his water was no longer free. He found that puzzling, as did most of the people present.
It also shows a California scientist who exposes toxins in US water supplies, a "water guru" working to provide clean drinking water in India, and the CEO of Suez who argues for privatization as the wave of the future.
"It should not be possible to be running out of water," Maude Barlow, a Canadian activist and author of a book on the water crisis, "Blue Covenant," told AFP. "But by mining groundwater and watersheds at the current rate, and contaminating water, we're actually losing water from the closed hydrologic cycle, and soon we'll be facing a water crisis."
A few words here. Depending upon whether the "mined" ground water is fossil water, we may actually be adding water to the hydrologic cycle. But "mining" water does not remove it from the global hydrologic cycle, unless you inject it deep into the earth's crust or something. And "contaminating water" does not actually remove water from the hydrologic cycle. The water may not be available for certain uses, but it is still in the hydrologic cycle.
Each year, water-borne diseases kill more than HIV, malaria, and wars combined, she noted, citing a World Health Organization (WHO) estimate. An exact figure was not available.
I suspect this is true. I have heard a figure as high as 12,000,000 deaths per year from waterborne diseases.
More than one billion people worldwide live without access to improved water sources, according to the WHO, and Barlow suggested 36 US states will run out of easily available fresh water in the next five to 10 years. "This notion that there is unlimited water to go around is wrong," she said, warning that water shortages were a potential cause of conflict.
Well, Barlow's right - we do not have unlimited water to go around. Here is some info on her contention about the 36 states - it's on Robert Osborne's Watercrunch blog, a GAO report, no less.
"We're running out of clean drinking water as the population grows and demand grows exponentially. Suddenly there will be conflicts over water between countries, between rich and poor, between rural and urban areas."
Barlow got involved in the cause when water was included as a trade-able commodity in the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). She has since pressed governments to enact strict laws to restrict agri-business and commercial uses of water. Drinking water currently accounts for only 10 percent of its use, the film notes.
The NAFTA issue is indeed intriguing, as it treats water as an economic good, and there is some real concern that it might trump water/environmental treaties or other agreements, perhaps even states' water laws.
Barlow warns that the bottled water trend, worth some 100 billion dollars in sales annually, and the creation of water cartels that own water delivery systems will lead to greater water shortages for the poor.
"Suddenly, water has become very big business," she said.
In one lighter scene in the film, a US restaurant serves "l'eau du Robinet" (tap water) to unsuspecting diners, and other faux bottled water brands, actually from a garden hose behind the restaurant.
One patron comments: "Oh yes, it tastes much better than tap water."
Hey - I support her when it comes to bottled water. No hay problema, Maude.
"We want it understood that nobody has the right to appropriate water for profit while people are being denied access to clean drinking water," Barlow said.
"Getting a UN covenant passed won't solve the problem, but it will shed light on it."
Amen, Ms. Barlow.
I look forward to seeing this film.
"Like swift water, an active mind never stagnates." -- Unknown
And in a related story, also from
The researchers examined historical records and maps, geochemical data, aerial photographs and other imagery from river systems in Pennsylvania and Maryland. They discovered that beginning in the 1700s, European settlers built tens of thousands of dams, with perhaps almost 18,000 or more in Pennsylvania alone.
She said she and Dr. Walter believed their work had important implications for stream restoration. For one thing, she said, evidence so far suggests that removing the overlay of sediment may encourage streams to return to a truly natural state. But also, she added, restoration “requires much more consideration of what we are trying to restore, and what might actually be a sustainable approach.”
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