The Global Water Crisis
As the gray dawn peaked over the distant mountains it was time for the women of the Maasai village to fetch the day's water. Two women hoisted blue plastic containers onto their backs and began the walk to the nearest water two miles away. I walked with them as they set a brisk pace in the cool morning air. This was a daily ritual for these women. It was usually only the women who fetched water for the day's cooking and drinking. We reached the shore of a shallow pond and I stared in disbelief. Animal feces and garbage floated on top of the muddy brown water. Three boys drove a herd of fifty goats into the water to drink. The boys waded knee deep in the water with no apparent concern for the filth that surrounded them. I could only imagine what pathogenic organisms lurked in the filthy water ready to infect any human who would dare drink from the pond.
We pushed our way through the goats and began scooping water into the containers with drinking cups. Now and then the women took a few mouthfuls to quench their thirst after the long walk. They offered me a cup- full but with as much tact as possible I refused saying that I wasn't thirsty. Actually I longed for a drink but I was determined that I wouldn't drink any of the filth that passed for water. Containers filled and the lids screwed on tight, we began the walk back to the village. I asked them if this pond was the only water available to them. "Yes," they told me, "except in the rainy season this is the closest water." When I asked about the need to share water with the animals they shrugged and told me that it was better than no water at all. For them it was either die from thirst, or risk infection and illness. They had no option but to take the risk.
Diseases like cholera, dysentery, typhoid fever and guinea worm parasites infect people whose only source of water is contaminated. Intestinal worm infections, dengue, and various bacteria can lead to deadly diarrhea related infections.
As Bill and I travel among, and live with various tribes in remote places of the world, we have discovered a frightening level of suffering and misery owing to the inadequacy of clean water. Water borne disease is almost beyond comprehension judging by the number of adults and children we have seen who suffer from these diseases. In Africa we witnessed the horrors of a guinea worm infection. A ten-year-old boy developed a large sore where the head of the worm, now mature, began its emergence from his body. The worm is contracted by drinking contaminated water . The larva is ingested by a water flea (Cyclops), where it develops and infects a person in two weeks. When a person drinks the water, the Cyclops is dissolved by the acidity of the stomach, and the larva is activated and penetrates the stomach wall. It develops and matures as it migrates through the body's subcutaneous tissue. After about one year, a blister forms on the skin, usually on the legs and the mature worm, sometimes 3 feet long, emerges, thus repeating the worm's life cycle. We watched as a tribal elder very slowly pulled the worm from the boy's leg. It was a painful process and took more than a week to extract the entire worm that was over two feet long. The resulting leg ulcer took several weeks to heal.
According to the World Health Organization, a child dies from a preventable disease associated with the lack of clean water every 30 seconds.
In the majority of developed countries we take clean water for granted. But the available water in underdeveloped countries can be a source of disease or even death. Often, it is not so much a problem of supply but is one of access, which can be eliminated through the drilling of capped water wells in rural areas. The wells would provide clean, uncontaminated drinking water thus ending the cycle of suffering and death. However the world's water sources are being polluted and made unfit for human use or being depleted by over use. According to United Nations reports more than 80% of sewage in developing countries is discharged untreated into lakes, rivers and coastal areas causing serious pollution and making surface water unfit for human consumption.
Much of China and India's surface waters are too polluted for drinking or even bathing. The problem also exists in most of Africa and Latin America. In countries where fish is the major protein source water pollution makes fish unfit for consumption. According to United Nations statistics the world is running out of water. Human pollution and excessive use are depleting, and diverting freshwater supplies so rapidly, that eventually there will not be a sufficient supply of water to fill the rapidly increasing world population needs. Using modern drilling technology humans are mining underground water sources faster than they can be replaced. Very often where water from underground aquifers is drawn to grow crops in the desert, the aquifers can't replenish their supply fast enough to keep up with demand.
The World Bank stated that China faces an acute challenge. China makes up 21% of humanity but controls just 7% of the water supply. The water basin in parts of northern China is falling by over three feet a year due to over-drilling from aquifers. In Heibei province the water level fell almost 10 feet in 2010. Every year an increasing number of rivers are running dry. The water supply has been so depleted through crop irrigation and industrialization that a network of pipelines is being constructed to carry water vast distances to replace the lost water.
In many countries in the quest for electricity the building of dams on major rivers disrupts the natural flow of water and in many cases prevents rivers from discharging their water into the ocean. World wide, new cities and urban sprawl cover wetlands, natural water-retentive land and water basins. The huge areas of concrete and asphalt are unable to absorb rain which disturbs the natural flow of water into rivers and lakes. This in turn, equates to less water in the cleansing hydro-logic cycle. As a result of warmer temperatures, mountain glaciers and snow packs are dwindling. An example is the Moroccan Atlas Mountains. When Bill and I hiked the entire length of the Atlas Mountains in 1996 the snow pack was ample enough to allow the spring time melt to replenish the desert aquifers in the desert below the eastern slopes. Now in 2011 the diminished winter snow pack often creates an acute water shortage for the desert people depending on an already meager water supply.
Himalayan glaciers are the source for all the major rivers of Asia - the Ganges, the Yellow River, the Yangtze. These rivers supply water to over three billion people. The retreating mountain glaciers will eventually mean less water for these vital life-giving rivers.
In 2001 when Bill and I walked 1,600 miles across the Gobi Desert the desert nomads told us that it was becoming increasingly difficult to dig a traditional shallow well for water because the water tables were dropping each year. Lord Stern, the World Bank's former chief economist, said governments had been slow to accept the awful truth that usable water is running out. Fresh rainfall is not enough to refill the underground water tables. "Water is not a renewable resource. People have been mining it without restraint and it has not been used properly," he said. He added, "Farming makes up 70% of global water demand. Fresh water for irrigation is never returned to underground aquifers; most is lost through leaks and evaporation."
A catastrophic water shortage could prove an even bigger threat to mankind this century than soaring food prices and the relentless exhaustion of energy reserves, according to a 2008 panel of global experts at the Goldman Sachs "Top Five Risks" conference. They emphasized that the demand for water continues to escalate at an unsustainable rate. Globally, water consumption is doubling every 20 years. They estimate that about one third of the global population will not have access to adequate drinking water in the next five years. Speakers at the conference spoke of disputes over cross-border water basins. Egypt has threatened military action against any country that draws water off the Nile without prior agreement.
The shift to an animal protein diet across Asia has added to the strain. It takes 15 cubic feet of water on average to produce 2 pounds of beef, compared to six for poultry, and 1.5 for corn.
It appears that the world's future will hinge on water. If nothing is done to reverse the situation those who have no access to clean water will risk dying of disease and those who need water for irrigating crops to provide food for human consumption will encounter severe rationing.
