Water and Development

Water is an essential need. One of those things we take for granted every day. It is essential in almost everything we do. Water and development have a close connection which this article discusses.

The parts which I find most interesting are quoted below:

The documentary’s look at Coca Cola (Coke for short) company’s activities in India highlighted problems also seen around the world. Because Coke had been pumping water from local wells and aquifers, this led to farmers digging deeper and deeper to search for waters, under sometimes dangerous conditions. Some farmers were digging as deep as 450 feet without finding water. The documentary noted that they wanted Coke to leave for they brought them nothing but misery. Indeed, earlier in 2000, violent protests by farmers in the state of Kerala led to the closure of Coke there.

The documentary also noted that for each liter of drink from Coca Cola, some 3 liters of water was needed.

When asked, Coke noted all the activities they were pursuing to be a more responsible neighbor. Coke also claimed that government figures showed they did not cause the drop in water levels, yet those figures showed otherwise. They also noted that agriculture is responsible for more water usage than Coca Cola. While this is partly correct, this applies more to industrial agribusinesses, not small farmers.

Furthermore, farmers are arguably using the land for more productive (and necessary) purposes than Coke. In addition, Coke, typical of many global companies, have used the lands (and, in this case, water) of the poor countries, to produce products to be mainly consumed by people in wealthy countries.

n Tanzania, the documentary noted the hardships and struggles of the poor when the country followed rich-country and World Bank advice and privatized their water services. In a region where currently 11 million lives are at risk from water shortage, these policies are having serious impacts. Privatization led to increased prices and lack of access, rather than increased access.

In Bolivia, even though much of the major city covered by the documentary was connected up by the global water company, the poor could not afford the connection charges. Some 200,000 people in that city—a quarter of the population—were not connected. (The French company that owned the water services there said in the documentary that the poor “chose” not to be connected.) Numerous health and social problems developed, especially for the children and the poor were resorting to illegal connections. (We can often see such actions by poor as being “illegal”, but when the system itself encourages such last-resort actions and “corruption” we hear less of that aspect.)

In Detroit, USA, the documentary noted that the poor in the richest country in the world were also affected by similar global problems. Like families in Tanzania, many African Americans in Detroit were finding they needed to make daily trips to get water. The documentary followed the struggle of a woman who had fallen behind on her water bills because her disabled husband’s medical bills had grown so much. Yet, some 40,000 households (some 100,000 people) in Detroit were facing water shortages in similar ways, simply for being too poor to afford the bills. In this particular case, city officials were also accused of running down the water service so that it could be privatized and thereby reduce their accountability.......

..Throughout Latin America and Asia, massive industrialization in rural communities is affecting the balance between humans and nature. Water use is being diverted from agriculture to industry. Huge corporate factories are moving up the rivers of the Third World, sucking them dry as they go............

Many of the world’s most water-stressed areas will get less water, and water flows will become less predictable and more subject to extreme events. Among the projected outcomes:

• Marked reductions in water availability in East Africa, the Sahel and Southern Africa as rainfall declines and temperature rises, with large productivity losses in basic food staples. Projections for rainfed areas in East Africa point to potential productivity losses of up to 33% in maize and more than 20% for sorghum and 18% for millet.
• The disruption of food production systems exposing an additional 75–125 million people to the threat of hunger.
• Accelerated glacial melt, leading to medium term reductions in water availability across a large group of countries in East Asia, Latin America and South Asia.
• Disruptions to monsoon patterns in South Asia, with the potential for more rain but also fewer rainy days and more people affected by drought.
• Rising sea levels resulting in freshwater losses in river delta systems in countries such as Bangladesh, Egypt and Thailand...........

............Agribusinesses growing crops for export are claiming more of the water once used by family and peasant farmers for food self-sufficiency. The global expansion in mining and manufacturing is increasing the threat of pollution of underground water supplies and contaminating the aquifers that provide more than 50 percent of domestic supplies in most Asian countries.

To feed the voracious global consumer market, China has transformed its entire economy, massively diverting water use from communities and local farming to its burgeoning industrial sector. As the big industrial wells consume more water, millions of Chinese farmers have found their local wells pumped dry. Eighty percent of China's major rivers are now so degraded, they no longer support fish. Economic globalization and the policies that drive it are proving to be totally unsustainable.