Around the world, people who have taken to heart United Nations statistics about water, 663,000,000 people don't have access to safe drinking water and 80% of untreated human wastewater discharges into rivers and seas, are coming up with creative methods to reach the U.N.'s goal: universal access to safe, affordable water.
Members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), which includes religious orders, are activist shareholders in key companies. At corporate meetings, they file resolutions requiring corporations to hold suppliers responsible for safe water practices, since, under the U.S. Clean Water Act, companies can be charged with criminal violations in federal courts. Tyson Foods, for example, has paid millions in fines for dumping fish-killing water from its chicken slaughtering and processing facility into a Missouri creek.
Even if ICCR resolutions don't gain enough support for a vote at a corporate annual meeting, ICCR members meet with corporation executives directly. They successfully pressured the Campbell Soup Corporation to monitor activities in its supply chain. Farmers who fail to meet Campbell's standards for water conservation practices are no longer suppliers. In Africa and Central Asia, ICCR members help villagers who wash in polluted water where mines and tanneries dump harmful chemicals, contact executives in multinational corporations and present their cases for pressuring suppliers to treat water responsibly.
Lack of access to drinkable water in developing countries is especially hard on the women and children who walk miles to wells each day rather than attend school or work for an income. Children also have drowned when water swept them away, while they were filling buckets in streams. Working in villages in 41 countries, including in disaster areas after earthquakes in Mexico and during the war in Syria, nongovernmental organizations, Mother's Hope and Water with Blessings, identify smart young mothers they call "water women" and educate them to share free information about hygiene and how to purify dirty water using a portable filtration system.
Unlike India and Bangladesh, countries that worry a Chinese dam will cut off their water supply from a river that flows south from Tibet, conflict between Muslims in northern Cameroon and the Christians in the South does not prevent harmonious cooperation on OK Clean Water projects in over 50 villages. First, villagers locate an accessible source of spring water. Then, the OK Clean Water organization's partnership of unskilled workers and skilled help from a local water engineer go to work using local materials. From the top of a hill, gravity carries spring water through pipes to a large storage tank and then to faucets close to villages.
In The House of Unexpected Sisters, the latest book in an Alexander McCall Smith series, the protagonist describes a system for watering her vegetable garden in Botswana, Africa.
From a drain in the house, a hose pipe stretches across the dusty garden to raised vegetable beds in the back of their plot. "There the hose fed the water into an old oil drum that acted as reservoir and from which much smaller pipes led to the individual beds. The final stage in the engineering marvel was the trailing of cotton threads from a bucket suspended above the plants; water would run down this thread drop by drop to the foot of each plant's stem. No water thus fell on ground where nothing grew; every drop reached exactly the tiny patch of ground where it was needed."
Contributions to both kiva.org and Water.org fund small loans to help villagers gain access to safe water. At kiva, for $25, individuals can choose water and sanitation projects in the regions of the world where they want to invest. Kiva gift cards are wonderful holiday stocking stuffers and birthday gifts that help students get involved in solving world problems.
UNICEF USA (at PO Box 96964, Washington, DC 20077-7399) collects donations of:
$92 for the personal hygiene and dignity kits 2 families need in emergencies
$234 for 50,000 water tablets that purify deadly, polluted water to make it safe for a child to drink
$415 for a water hand pump that provides clean, safe drinking water for an entire community
Wells of Life (wellsoflife.org), a nonprofit organization that builds wells in East Africa, gratefully accepts donations from those who would like to build a well dedicated to an individual or group. A member of the organization's advisory board, John Velasquez, recently dedicated his contribution for a bore hole and water well in Uganda to a Benedictine nun on her 104th birthday.
Finally, major research projects are working on large scale government policy solutions to the world's water crisis. Based on studies, mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies have been found to help governments predict the health of streams and rivers all over the world. When these aquatic insects disappear, water is in trouble.
As urban populations grow throughout the world and pavement covers land that used to absorb water, policies for managing both scarce water and floods become critically important. When Sao Paulo, Brazil, managed a drought by reducing pump pressure at certain times of the day, there were unintended consequences. Homes on higher elevations often had no water, while tanks serving homes in lower elevations never had a shortage. Studies showed a lack of central control over water management in Mumbai, India, gave control to plumbers who knew each area and those who had the political connections to hire them. It is no surprise to find flood conditions require government budgeting for backup energy sources to provide electricity to keep water pumps and drinking water treatment plants working.
Water is everywhere and so are the people determined to find it, keep it clean, and manage it effectively.
No comments:
Post a Comment