Our water
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VITAL STATISTICS
Nearly 70% of the worlds freshwater is locked in ice.
Most of the rest is in Aquifers that we are draining much more quickly than the natural recharge rate.
Two-thirds of our water is used to grow food.
With 83 million more people on earth each year, water demand will keep going up unless we change how we use it.
- WATER, Our Thirsty World. National Geographic. April 2010.
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Water is essential for all life
BC's water is under pressure from increasing demands while global warming means that its supply will be less certain. We must act now to protect our rivers, streams and groundwater, and to balance competing demands for this precious and limited resource.
Right now, the BC government is considering how to modernize our Water Act. Click here to let them know what's needed to manage our water in a smarter way. Your voice will count!
This alert is part of a series of action alerts from members of Organizing for Change, an effort of BC's leading conservation groups working to protect the health of the people, land, air, water and wildlife of British Columbia. Together we identify environmental priorities that we present to government as opportunities for them to demonstrate their environmental leadership.
Water should be considered a right for all living things, not commodity to be privatizated!
Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow reports that the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly, for the first time, to adopt a resolution recognizing the human right to drinking water and sanitation. One hundred and twenty-two countries voted in favour of the resolution, none opposed and 41 abstained [unfortunately Canada abstained]. Click on title for more.
“At the very time Canada was voting against a UN resolution making water a human right, more than 100 aboriginal communities across the country were facing drinking water advisories requiring them to boil their water or rely on emergency deliveries.” Read more by clicking on title.
PRIVATIZATION: LOCAL, NATIONAL, INTERNATIONAL THEFT by Robin Mathews
The privatization of water (and the releasing of its control without supervision to private corporations) connects directly to the general assault on democratic structures locally and across the (Western) world. The process is local and global. It intends to remove public participation (legislative and other) from decision making and to direct all wealth held by the “commons” (water being a key component) to private control and use. The assault on water as a commonly shared resource has a history. Canada, British Columbia, Vancouver Island are a major part of that history. Robbin Mathews gave this presentation to Your Water ~ Your Future Forum in Nanaimo in May 2010. Please read more by clicking on title.
Canada-Europe trade deal threatens public water in Canada
European corporations already have access to Canadian muncipal services. Winnipeg city council just voted in favour of a 30-year contract with French water corporation Veolia. But under CETA [Canada-European Trade agreement] , the legal rights of these corporations would be entrenched in an international agreement.
Among other rights, European corporations will be guaranteed "national treatment," which means they will have the same rights as Canadian corporations. Europe is home to the largest water corporations in the world including Veolia, Suez and RWE Thames. Unlike NAFTA, the CETA includes access to municipal and provincial procurement, which means European corporations will be granted the same "national treatment" as public utilities. They will have the same access to municipal contracts and government subsidies as public utilities. Please read more.
Take a look at the 'virtual water' content of various consumption goods listed by UNESCO on this link.
World Wildlife Fund report that a pair of leather shoes requires 8,000 litres and an new car 400,000 litres.
The film, produced by Sam Bozzo, is based on the book "Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water" by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke (2003).
In every corner of the globe, we are polluting, diverting, pumping, and wasting our limited supply of fresh water at an expediential level as population and technology grows. The rampant overdevelopment of agriculture, housing and industry increase the demands for fresh water well beyond the finite supply, resulting in the desertification of the earth.
Corporate giants force developing countries to privatize their water supply for profit. We follow numerous worldwide examples of people fighting for their basic right to water.
For more information on this film visit Blue gold world water wars website.
View on YouTube Water on the table (3:30 minutes - trailer)
Is water a human right, or a commodity to be bought and sold like gold and oil? That's the question at the heart of this timely new documentary by filmmaker Liz Marshall. Over the course of a year in Canada and the United States, the film follows Canadian activist Maude Barlow as she campaigns against the privatization of water and tries to bring attention to how industry is polluting the water table. Please also visit Water on the table website (this is a different link from the above one) for more information on the film or the fact that water should be a human right for all.
View on YouTube Flow (2:24 minutes - trailer)
Documents builds a case against the growing privatization of the world's dwindling fresh water supply with an focus on politics, pollution, human rights, and the emergence of a domineering world water cartel.
View on YouTube Water: blue gold in the 21st century, part 1 (8:10 minutes)
View on YouTube Blue covenant: the global water crisis and the coming battle for the right to water (60 minutes) Maude Barlow in her book of the same tittle, makes a most compelling argument about what will be the greatest environmental and human crisis of the 21st Century - the global water crisis and access to safe drinking water being a basic human right. Please also read a small excerpt of her book online.
Blue Covenant: the Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water by Maude Barlow
“Blue Covenant is the most important book that’s ever been written on the global water crisis. It’s a wake-up call that should be read by everyone from world leaders to students. Maude Barlow has done it again—taken a difficult and frightening subject and made it an absorbing read.
She presents the concept of virtual water which describes water used in production of crops or maunfactured goods that moved when traded. 300 litres needed to produce a small bag of salad , while a kilogram of wheat requires a thousand litres. 30,000 litres are used to produce one kilogram of cotton.
Please also read a small excerpt of her book online.
The story of bottled water
Is a short (7 minute) behind-the-scenes look at the bottled water business that examines how we have been duped into buying half a billion bottles a week of what is essentially tap water, but at a price that is approximately two thousand times higher. Worse yet, the mountains of plastic bottles generated as waste tower higher, though less majestically, than the snow-capped peaks on the water bottle labels.
Canadian researchers say they've learned some bottled water in Canada contains more bacteria than what comes out of the tap — although they won't reveal which brands are the culprits. To read more, click on title
Millions of people worldwide ARE Opposed to Plastic Bottled Water. Alternative Solution? Right here, Right NOW!
Consider these alternatives to plastic bottled water to avoid the damaging effects upon our environment and our health. Besides the toxins leaching into the water, it takes three litres of water to make one litre of bottled water. Read more by clicking on title.
Local water is a global issue
By Richard Boyce - Parksville Qualicum Beach News
Published: January 08, 2009
I've explored much of the crystal-clear water of Englishman River, as it runs its course of 10 kilometers between the source on Mount Arrowsmith and the estuary in the Strait of Georgia.
Jumping off the cliffs at the lower falls in the provincial park led my friends and I to swim across the large pool to the gushing flow of water that was the falls. Skirting around the edge of the pounding water and thick spray we were able to access a fairly large cave in behind the cascading waterfall. We sat on a log, wedged between the rocks, and watched the light filter in through the emerald coloured waterfall. That memory will remain with me forever.
Today, that waterfall no longer exists. The water has finally carved through solid rock, allowing the river to flow under a massive boulder rather than over it. The deep canyon between steeply carved cliffs, etched out by the river's flow of water, bears testament to the fact this type of natural change has been happening for millennia. The disappearance of this waterfall reminds me to look at the bigger picture.
Multi-national corporations around the world are taking over control of the world's water. The pretense is usually that the local governments cannot keep up with the public demands for increased water, safety and security. The result is that the price of water doubles, public access decreases, and poor people die of thirst. The fact is corporations have made water more expensive than anything the general public consumes because it is essential for us to exist. Water in small plastic bottles fetches double the price of gasoline.
Today Natural Glacial Waters, a local company, pumps fresh water directly out of Rosewall Creek, just north of Deep Bay. They export more than 24 million individual plastic bottles of water to Asia every year. Recycling has to be a question, but so does ownership of water. Who has the right to sell water?
In 1997 the World Bank, on behalf of multi-national corporations, forced the government of Bolivia to privatize their public water systems as explicit condition of aid for this impoverished country. The collection of rainwater by the people was made illegal. The people revolted, police killed ordinary citizens, but the people prevailed and eventually they were victorious. The government was forced to change and some of the multi-national corporations were expelled from the country. Water was returned to the people as a right, not a privilege to be paid for with cash.
"In every corner of the globe, we are polluting, diverting, pumping, and wasting our limited supply of fresh water at an expediential level as population and technology grows. The rampant overdevelopment of agriculture, housing and industry increase the demands for fresh water well beyond the finite supply, resulting in the desertification of the earth."
This quote comes directly from a film I saw on the big screen during the holidays. Blue Gold: World Water Wars is winning awards, receiving rave reviews, and attracting a great deal of public attention.
The film goes on to state; "Corporate giants force developing countries to privatize their water supply for profit. Wall Street investors target desalination and mass bulk water export schemes. Corrupt governments use water for economic and political gain. Military control of water emerges and a new geo-political map and power structure forms, setting the stage for world water wars."
Maude Barlow, one of the main characters in the film proclaims, "This is our revolution, this is our war. A line has been crossed, as water becomes a commodity. Will we survive?"
As the national chairperson of the Council of Canadians and the founder of the Blue Planet Project, [Maude] Barlow has been raising awareness about this issue for decades and sees a sharp increase in support as people begin to realize the dangers.
One of the most inspiring characters is a Canadian, Ryan Hreljac, who started raising money to provide clean drinking water for people in Africa when he was in Grade 1. Since then he has raised $2 million, building 319 wells in 114 countries, providing clean water to nearly half a million people. Today he's in high school.
To Curb Climate Change, We Need to Protect Water:
An International Rescue Plan for Fresh Water
by Maude Barlow
It is widely acknowledged that greenhouse gas emission-fueled climate change is having a profound and negative impact on fresh water systems around the world. Warmer weather causes more rapid evaporation of lakes and rivers, reduced snow and ice cover on open water systems, and melting glaciers.
What is less understood is that our collective abuse and displacement of fresh water is also a serious cause of climate change and global warming. If we are to successfully address climate change, it is time to include an analysis of how our abuse of water is an additional factor in the creation of global warming as well as solutions that protect water and watersheds.
There are two major factors. The first is the actual displacement of water from where it is sustaining a healthy ecosystem as well as healthy hydrologic cycles. Because humanity has polluted so much surface water on the planet, we are now mining the groundwater far faster than it can be replaced by nature. New Scientist reports of a "little-heralded crisis" all over Asia as a result of the exponential drilling of groundwater. Water is moved from where nature has put it in watershed and aquifers (where we can access it) to other place where it is used for flood irrigation and food production - where much of it lost to evaporation or to supply the voracious thirst of mega cities, where it is usually dumped as waste into the ocean.
Water is also lost to ecosystems through global trade - water used in the in the production of crops or manufactured goods that are then exported (known as virtual trade in water). Over 20% of daily water used for human purpose is exported out of watersheds in this way. Water is also piped across long distances for industry leaving behind parched landscapes.
The second factor is the removal of the vegetation needed for a healthy hydrologic cycle. Urbanization, deforestation and wetland destruction greatly destroy water-retentive landscapes and lead to the loss of precipitation over the affected area.
Slovakian scientist Michal Kravcik and his colleagues explain that the living world influences the climate mainly by regulating the water cycle and the huge energy flows linked to it. Transpiring plants, especially forests, work as a kind of biotic pump, causing humid air to be sucked out of the ocean and transferred to dry land. If the vegetation is removed from the land, this natural system of biosphere regulation is interrupted. Soil erodes, reducing the content of organic material in the ground, thus reducing its ability to hold water. Dry soil from lost vegetation traps solar heat, sharply increasing the local temperature and causing a reduction in precipitation over the affected area. This process also destroys the natural sequestration of carbon in the soil, leading to carbon loss.
Of course, these two factors are deeply related. Just as removing vegetation from an ecosystem will dry up the soil, so too will removing water from an ecosystem mean reduced or non-existent vegetation.
Taken together, these two factors are hastening the desertification of the planet, and intensifying global warming. Even if we successfully address and reverse greenhouse gas emissions and our dependence on fossil fuels, Kravcik says, we will not be able to stop climate change if we do not deal with the impact of our abuse of water on the planet.
Unless we collectively address the crisis of fresh water and our cavalier treatment of the world's water systems, we will not restore the climate to health.
Restoration of Watersheds
The solution to the water half of this crisis is the massive restoration of watersheds. Bring water back into parched landscapes. Return water that has disappeared by retaining as much rainwater as possible within the ecosystem so that water can permeate the soil, replenish groundwater systems, and return to the atmosphere to regulate temperatures and renew the hydrologic cycle. All human, industrial and agricultural activity must become part of this project, which could employ millions and alleviate poverty in the global South. Our cities must be ringed with green conservation zones and we must restore forests and wetlands - the lungs and kidneys of fresh water. For this to be successful, three basic laws of nature must be addressed.
1) It is necessary to create the conditions that allow rainwater to remain in local watersheds. This means restoring the natural spaces where rainwater can fall and where water can flow. Water retention can be carried out at all levels: roof gardens in family homes and office buildings; urban planning that allows rain and storm water to be captured and returned to the earth; water harvesting in food production; capturing daily water discharge and returning it clean to the land, not to the rising oceans.
2) We cannot continue to mine groundwater supplies at a rate greater than natural recharge. If we do, there will not be enough water for the next generation. Governments everywhere must undertake intensive research into their groundwater supplies and regulate groundwater takings before these underground reservoirs are gone. This may mean a shift in policy from export to domestic and local production.
3) We must stop polluting our surface and groundwater sources - and we must back up this intention with strict legislation. Water abuse in oil and methane gas production and in mining must stop. We must wean ourselves of industrial and chemical-based agricultural practices and listen to the many voices sounding the alarm about the rush toward water-guzzling bio fuel farming. We need to promote "subsidiarity," whereby national policies and international trade rules support local food production in order to protect the environment and promote local sustainable agriculture. Such policies also discourage the virtual trade in water. Countries should also limit or ban the mass movement of water by pipeline. Government investment in water and wastewater infrastructure would save huge volumes of water lost every day. Local laws could enforce water-harvesting practices at every level.
Toward a Water Secure World
Clearly, for this rescue plan to be successful, governments around the world must acknowledge the water crisis and the part the role water abuse plays in the warming (and drying) of the planet. This in turn means that a nation's water resources must be considered in every government policy at all levels. Nations must undertake intensive studies to ascertain the health of watersheds and groundwater reserves. All activities that will impact water must conform to a new ethic - backed by law - that protects water sources from pollution and over-pumping. This will likely mean a strong challenge to government policies that favour unlimited global economic growth.
Nearly two billion people live in water-stressed regions of the earth. Until now, the UN has addressed this terrible reality with a program to give them access to groundwater sources. But current levels of groundwater takings are unsustainable. To truly realize the universal right to water, and to protect water for nature's own uses, means a revolution in the way we treat the world's finite water resources. There is no time to lose.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License
Maude Barlow chairs the board of Food and Water Watch and is the senior adviser on water to the president of the U.N. General Assembly. Her new book is "Blue Covenant, The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle For the Right to Water" (McClelland & Stewart, 2007).
Water Policy for Canada
Canada does not have water policy. Here is a good start.
1) Recognizing that WATER is a human right at every level of government; This will ensure that all people living in Canada are legally entitled, without discrimination, to safe, clean drinking water and water for sanitation in sufficient quantities and that inequalities in access are addressed immediately.
2) Declaring that surface and ground water are a public trust; Under a public trust doctrine, private water use would be subservient to the public interest.
3) Creating a national public water infrastructure fund; Decades of cuts to infrastructure funding, coupled with the downloading of several programs and services to municipal governments, have resulted in a "municipal infrastructure deficit", conservatively estimated at 123 billion dollars by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
4) Providing a strategy to address water pollution and pollution concerns; a strategy would include;
a) Standards for industry and agribusiness; Every level of government must ensure strict laws are enacted and that enforcement becomes primary against industrial dumping.
b) A slowdown of tar sands production; The tar sands releases four billion liters of contaminated water in Alberta's groundwater and natural ecosystems every year.
c) Removal of Schedule 2 from the Fisheries Act; Lakes that would normally be protected as fish habitat by the Fisheries Act are now being redefined as "tailing impoundment areas". This must be halted!
d) National enforceable standards for sewage treatment; Canada currently has no national standards for municipal sewage treatment and wastewater effluent quality.
5. Banning bulk water exports: In the last two years we have seen detailed proposal from think tanks in both the United States and Canada to export water from Manitoba and Quebec. These projects are extremely costly, require vast amounts of energy and pose great threats to watersheds across our country.
6. Excluding water from NAFTA and all future trade agreements; There are many "holes" in the current NAFTA agreement. Only a clear exclusion of water from NAFTA and other trade agreements will avert the current threats to our Water.
There are more people that die, world wide, from lack of water or water contamination than die in wars. That fact should astound you all and assist you in ensuring that our WATER remains a public trust and that it is protected.
Water conference
Oceanside Coalition for Strong Communities hosted a conference in November 2006 called
Our Water Our Future A report summary of conference press release
See also Fred Davies' article on the water conference.
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