How Did A Handful Of Corporations Steal Our Water? Water is the very essence of life, sustaining every being on the planet. ‘FLOW‘ confronts the disturbing reality that our crucial resource is dwindling and greed just may be the cause

Irena Salina’s award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century – The World Water Crisis. Salina builds a case against the growing privatization of the world’s dwindling fresh water supply with an unflinching focus on politics, pollution, human rights, and the emergence of a domineering world water cartel.

Interviews with scientists and activists intelligently reveal the rapidly building crisis, at both the global and human scale, and the film introduces many of the governmental and corporate culprits behind the water grab, while begging the question “CAN ANYONE REALLY OWN WATER?”

Beyond identifying the problem, FLOW also gives viewers a look at the people and institutions providing practical solutions to the water crisis and those developing new technologies, which are fast becoming blueprints for a successful global and economic turnaround.

(Above text from footnotes to the video)

Watch this 84 minutes documentary where several environmental activists like Vandana Shiva, Maude Barlow, Medha Patkar and Rajendra Singh explain why we are facing the biggest crisis of our times, and how large corporations and global institutions such as the World Bank are behind this.

Further links you may be interested in:

EWTT: Low Cost Methods of Water Purification
EWTT: Waters of the Third Pole: Water crisis in Asia

Another powerful documentary to watch: A World Without Water

The world is running out of its most precious resource. True Vision’s timely film tells of the personal tragedies behind the mounting privatisation of water supplies. More than a billion people across the globe don’t have access to safe water. Every day 3900 children die as a result of insufficient or unclean water supplies. The situation can only get worse as water gets evermore scarce.

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This article has been written in support of BLOG ACTION DAY 2010, an annual online event where bloggers of the world unite to write on a specific issue on the same day, namely 15th October.  This year’s topic is WATER and there are over 4000 blogs from more than 130 countries participating today reaching in excess of 32 million readers.

My curiosity in the way pure drinking water can be made available to those with little access to it, was piqued by this image of a woman in the Vamdse village in Karnataka harvesting rainwater with a saree. This method is also followed by villagers in Kuttanad, Kerala.  It’s a simple improvisation, a local solution, and quite ingenious. (Source: India Together.org)

The villagers also boil the water before drinking.  Using garment cloth such as linen, cotton and other cloth folded several times is a simple way for water purification. While it filters solid particles, microbes and pathogens larger than 20 microns, including 99% of the V. Cholerae, it does not remove chemical contaminants or dissolved compounds.

According to the World Health Organisation, water borne diseases are the major cause of death in the world. Here are some quick facts from the UN Human Development Report 2006 and the GOOD: Water video that show how millions of people in the world suffer from the effects of unsafe drinking water.

• About 1.1  billion people in developing countries lack access to water, with 2.6 billion without basic sanitation
• Diarrhoea kills 4,100 children every day or 1.8 million children a year,  90% of whom are under 5 years of age. Each year, 443 million school days are lost due to diarrhoea and water-related illnesses.
• Nearly half of all people in developing countries suffer from a water or sanitation related health problem. Diarhhoea episodes can be reduced by half by household treatment.

How can cheap and affordable solutions be made available to the poor to improve water quality, prevent disease and save lives? Here are some very interesting examples which can substantially reduce the risk of disease, even though they may not completely eliminate the dangers from chemical contaminants.

1.   Moringa (moringa oleifera) is often called a “miracle tree” or the “world’s most useful tree“  because of its ability to provide an amazing variety of nutrients. It grows easily and in dry conditions, and is a low cost nutrition source for millions of poor. The seeds (of the commonly known drumstick pods) can be used as well as an affordable water purification method.

2. Abundant Water is an NGO based in Thailand, which helps communities get safe drinking water using local clay and coffee grounds and baked in a cow dung fire. The clay pots remove harmful bacteria and protozoa, and is such a simple, local solution.

3.  Life Straw – it’s portable, and kills 99.9% of the disease carrying microbes. It has 4 different filters,  the first is a textile 15 micron pre- filter that sieves out dirt and sediments. The second is a halogen based resin filter to remove bacteria on contact. The third filter stops viruses and parasites. The last is a carbon filter which improves taste and smell. Each LifeStraw can purify 700 litres of water or about 2 litres a day. It costs about US $3 to $5.

4. The WaterCone

This is a simple desalination method which evaporates salty or brackish water, and recaptures salt-free water through condensation. The black pan at the base meaures 60-80 cms in diameter. Water is poured on the pan and exposed to sunlight for the day. Clean water droplets accumulate on the cone and can be captured by inverting the cone. This can yield more than a litre of water a day. The cone is made with UV-resistant polycarbonate plastic, it’s nontoxic and recyclable with a life expectancy of 5-7 years. It costs about US $25 a piece.

5. BioSand Water Filter: Inside a concrete box is a filter which is made up of  a layer of gravel over which sand is overlain.  A shallow layer of water sits on top of the sand, where a biofilm (schmutzdecke) is created. This helps further filters the water of harmful microorganisms.

Terafil

6. Terafil Terracotta Filters offer hope for clean drinking wter in villages in Jharkand, India. It’s “a red porous media produced from a mixture of red clay, river sand and wood saw dust. The dough of the mixture is sintered at high temperature in a low cost coal/wood fired furnace to make the terracotta disk porous.  It would cost about Rs 350 to Rs 500.”

Further Links you may be interested in :

Safe Water International.org : Low Cost Water Purification Sytems

The Next 4 Billion: The Water Market

YouTube: Rain Catching through Johads - Rajendra Singh

TED: Michael Pritchard makes filthy water drinkable

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Read the full Stanford University article here, which also quotes the National Research Council as reporting that:

the ocean’s chemistry is changing faster than it has in hundreds of thousands of years, because carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere and absorbed into the oceans, making them more acidic. Studies have shown increased ocean acidity decreases photosynthesis, nutrient absorption, growth and reproduction of marine organisms.

 
It’s also of increasing concern that due to the soaring acidity in oceans, they are no longer able to absorb human induced carbon emissions as fast as before, according to the report in Nature  in November 2009. The current rate of ocean acidification is up to 10 times faster than 55 million years ago  which was the last time the deep oceans became so acidic.

According to a Time magazine article:

A new study by the University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey estimated that emissions have jumped 29% since 2000. The Nature study found that over the same period, the proportion of fossil-fuel emissions absorbed by the oceans has fallen by as much as 10%. Though it’s not clear why, the fact seems to be that the oceans’ absorption ability can’t keep up with the rate at which we’re burning fossil fuels. That’s troubling because even under the most optimistic projections, man-made carbon emissions aren’t likely to decline for years. “There’s a physical limit to how rapidly the oceans can absorb CO2,” says Khatiwala. “The ocean becomes a less efficient sink.”

Last year NRDC (National Resource Defence Council) released a video called Acid Test, narrated by Sigourney Weaver. It talks about the importance of our oceans and the consequences of increasing acidification of oceans.

This reduced ability of oceans to absorb CO2 emissions has an important bearing on the decisions of nations to reduce carbon emissions. The underlying assumption behind the IPCC studies, as well as the COP15 Climate Summit at Copenhagen in December 2009, was that oceans and forests, the natural sinks of the world have the ability to absorb about 50% of man-made carbon emissions.  As forests disappear and oceans become more acidic, they absorb less carbon, and increase the rate of global temperature rises.   Predictions about future temperature rises and related policy decisions have to factor in the reduced efficiency of oceans as carbon sinks.

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Water on the Table

Here’s a trailer of the movie:

This is what the Official Press Release as mentioned on the Water on the Table website has to say :

(Toronto – February 5, 2010) Canadian crusader Maude Barlow has had to defend the life-or-death truth against corporate interests for years… And even today, it is a war un-won. At stake in her crusade is humanity’s own right to the liquid that sustains all life – balanced against powerful interests that insist water is just another resource to be bought and sold. In some countries where the corporate argument has prevailed, the poor can be barred from collecting rainwater.

Water On The Table is a character-driven, social-issue documentary by Liz Marshall that explores Canada’s relationship to its freshwater, arguably its most precious natural resource. The film asks the question: is water a commercial good like running-shoes or Coca-Cola? Or, is it a human right like air?

Water On The Table approaches this question through the eyes of Barlow – an “international water-warrior,” a lightning rod for the looming water crisis. She fought relentlessly – if in vain – to keep water off the table in the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement, and she served as the U.N. Senior Advisor on Water to the 63rd President of the General Assembly from 2008 – 2009.

“Water must be declared a public trust that belongs to the people, the ecosystem and the future, and preserved for all time and practice in law, as a human right.” Barlow says.

Water On The Table shadows Maude Barlow at the controversial tar sands in Alberta, in the halls of the United Nations, and protesting Site 41 – a local issue with global resonance – the camera follows Barlow and a cross-section of farmers, Mohawk First Nation activists, cottagers and seniors in Simcoe County, Ontario to protest dumpsite Site 41. After decades of contentiousness, the municipality of North Simcoe seemed finally set on greenlighting a privately-administered land-fill on the far-reaching Alliston Aquifer, what one water expert, University of Heidelberg Professor William Shotyk, has called “the cleanest water in the world.” Barlow’s strategic campaign resulted in Walks For Water eventually attracting up to two thousand people and a proposal for a one year moratorium on the site. The attention on the issue lit a fire under both local and provincial governments. Water On The Table tracks the arc of this monumental struggle.

But more than an activist’s diary, Water On The Table is a poetic essay that intimately captures the public face of Maude Barlow as well as the unscripted woman behind the scenes. Her day-in-the-life is woven between dramatic, artfully crafted debates with several opponents in Canada and in the U.S. who argue that the best way to protect freshwater is to privatize it, and that water-rich Canada should bulk- export its water now, in the face of an imminent U.S. water crisis.

Cinematic water compositions by Steve Cosens (The Tracey Fragments, Durham County, Nurse Fighter Boy) create a reflective mood. The camera lingers on watersheds, wetlands, rivers, estuaries, cascades and lakes, elevating water beyond the political and into the realm of our own soul as a species on Earth.

Water On The Table is an 11th-hour cinematic wake-up call, and an unforgettable profile of a woman on an unstoppable mission.

Documentary cinematic storyteller Liz Marshall has explored social justice in projects shot all over the world, including West and Central Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, Central and South America, Europe, and North America. She has focused on censorship issues for writers, war-affected children, the anti-corporate-globalization movement, gender, education, sweatshop labour,
refugees, HIV/AIDS, popular culture, music and the written and spoken word.

Maude Barlow is the National Chair of the citizen advocacy group The Council Of Canadians, the co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, a best-selling author of 16 books, the recipient of the Right Livelihood Award (the ‘Alternative Nobel’), and a holder of eight honourary Doctorates.”

 

Water privatisation is a matter of concern to many of us in Asia, with climate change and population growth adding much pressure to the demand for scarce water resources.  Vandana Shiva, the well known environmental activist from India has written extensively on the subject in her book, Water Wars.   NGOs such as India Resource Centre continue to campaign for the legitimate needs of  local communities versus bigger corporate interests like Coca-Cola.

Countries such as Singapore depend on its neighbour, Malaysia for water supplies.  It would interesting to see what lessons the movie made in a North American context has for this part of the world.

Further links to explore:

Food and Water Watch Report:  All Bottled Up- Nestle’s Pursuit of Community Water

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