Water, water, everywhere — or at
least in Canada it seems it is, especially here on the Wet Coast where, unlike
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poor, becalmed ancient mariner, we have plenty of
drops to drink. Or at least we act like we do.
For we Canucks have a predilection
for taking water for granted, as if our very Canadianess depends on it, while
each of us uses an atrocious 1,600 cubic metres of water per year, twice the
rate of people in France, four times as much as the average Swede, and more
than eight times more than the average Dane.
It seems we can barely picture how to
adjust to a world that’s otherwise, and all this against a backdrop of world
need for fresh water going through the roof while supplies dwindle.
I was thinking about all this on the
30th anniversary of the UN’s World Water Day, which is supposed to get people
thinking about water and its very preciousness. The day just passed by, largely
unnoticed, on March 20. (Usually World Water Day is March 22, but it was
changed this year because it’s part of the UN’s Year of Sanitation.)
Given Canada’s abysmal
— embarrassing? — water usage, I’d say
we have much to ponder. According to a University of Victoria study by David
Boyd comparing Canada’s environmental performance to other industrialized
countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), we’re
pretty pathetic in many arenas, especially water use.
Since 1980, overall water use in
Canada has
increased
by 25.7 per cent —
five times higher than the overall OECD increase of 4.5 per cent. By contrast,
nine OECD nations were able to decrease their overall water use since 1980:
Sweden, the Netherlands, the U.S., U.K., Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Poland,
Finland and Denmark.
So we can’t argue that we’re too big,
or too small, or too poor, or too rich to do so. Not to put politicians in the
hot seat or make you feel bad that you didn’t put a low-flush toilet or
low-flow showerhead in that new house you just built, but come on, Canada,
what’s our excuse?
Then there’s the future. Even if you
only occasionally tune into world news, you can’t help but know that climate
change has already started putting pressure on all sorts of things, including
fresh water supplies, in many parts of the world, like our neighbouring prairie
provinces and the U.S.
A report just released by two of the
European Union’s top foreign policy advisors warns EU leaders that they should
have started planning yesterday for a “flood” of “climate change refugees”
escaping intolerable conditions due to changing conditions, including
shortfalls in fresh water supplies of 30 per cent in some regions.
And lest we get too smug here at
home, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007
Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore for their work compiling and disseminating
knowledge about man-made climate change, reminds us that, despite wishful
thinking or our studied indifference, the Pacific Northwest will not, repeat,
not be immune to impacts on water resources due to climate change. (The IPCC
was set up by the World Meteorological Organization and the UN Environment
Program in 1988 to research climate change and its impacts; the 2007 panel received
input from 800 top scientists around the world.)
The IPCC’s 2007 report warns that
with its large and rapidly growing population and dependence on water for
agricultural irrigation and hydropower, the Pacific Northwest is going to see
increasing competition for water as our climate changes. We’re going to see
changes such as a rise in snow line, earlier snow melt, more frequent rain on
snow, changes in seasonal stream flows, possible reductions in summer stream
flows, and reduced summer soil moisture.
Then there are the human “access to
water” issues. Many events on World Water Day this year marked the Year of
Sanitation theme. In New York’s Central Park an event called “Stand Up for
Those Who Can’t Sit Down” made a huge lineup for a public toilet, reminding
people of the millions who have to stand in line to use a toilet every day —
and of the 2.6 billion who don’t even have a toilet to line up for.
According to the UN, one person in
three has no access to basic sanitation. That combined with a lack of safe
drinking water and inadequate hygiene means one child dies every 20 seconds —
more than all other childhood diseases. Children, especially girls, are forced
to stay out of school, while hygiene-related diseases keep adults from engaging
in productive work. And our current federal government is resisting a UN
declaration to make access to clean water a basic human right.
Beyond the statistics, Suketu Mehta’s
brilliant book on the underbelly of Bombay —
Maximum City
— paints more personalized accounts of coping without
basic sanitation. People learn to time their visits to the fields of feces
alongside railway tracks or open sewers to relieve themselves in as much
privacy as possible. Women and girls awaken to go out at 3 or 4 a.m. to retain
some dignity under the cover of darkness and avoid being raped. Those with more
resources know the location of every public washroom in the city and manage
their bowels accordingly.
Collective failure is part of the
reason for the focus on sanitation in 2008 and this year’s World Water Day. The
world’s nations have fallen abysmally short of the UN’s Millennium Development
Goals that were adopted in 2000. One goal was to cut by half the number of
people living without access to basic sanitation by the year 2015, but experts
predict that by 2015, 2.1 billion people will still lack basic sanitation.
So if you missed World Water Day this
year, maybe some of these impressions will drift across your consciousness the
next time you brush your teeth with the tap running full blast or take an extra
long shower. Or the next time you feel like sending your MP a letter or e-mail,
or you’re considering fundraising causes for your community group.
For don’t forget that “world” is as
much part of World Water Day as “water”, and in a “world-class” resort such as
Whistler that posits itself to be in the lead up to a “worldly” Olympic event,
it doesn’t behoove anyone to think of themselves in a global context only when
it’s convenient or it suits us. Taking Mahatma Gandhi’s counsel to heart, you
must be the change you wish to see in the world.
Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning
freelance writer who supports a project in rural Egypt putting in water wells
and another building clean water reservoirs for four villages in Haiti.
