Every living being on earth, including humans, needs water. The recommended basic amount of water needed by each person is around 50 litres per day. 5 litres are needed for drinking and cooking and 25 litres to maintain personal hygiene needs and the rest goes into producing food. The average person in the United States uses 600 litres of domestic urban water per day. Europeans use about 250-300 litres while people in sub-Saharan Africa use 10-20 litres per day.
Fresh Water
97.5% of the world’s water is in the oceans. Only 2.5% of the waters of the world are fresh water and much of that is locked up in ice and snow in Antarctica, Greenland, the Arctic and the Himalayas and the Andes. Around 1% of the fresh water is available, which amounts to 0.01% of the world’s water. While I will argue that we have a global water crisis, figures from the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the UN indicate that, currently we extract only 10% of the 43,750 cubic kilometers of fresh water which is recycled each year to the earth’s rivers, lakes and aquifers.
During the 20th century the human population tripled. Water consumption on the other hand jumped 7-fold. World-wide the demand for water is doubling every 21 years. By 2020, water use is expected to grow by 40 per cent. It is no surprise then that demand for fresh water globally is currently overtaking its ready supply in many parts of the world. Writing in Scientific America, Peter Rogers informs us that, ‘scientists expect water scarcity to become more common in large part because the world’s population is rising and many people are getting richer (thus expanding demand) and because climate change is exacerbating aridity and reducing supply in many regions.’ In 2008, almost 800 million people experienced water shortages. The situation may deteriorate further in the next two decades. The United Nations predicts that by the year 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population will experience water shortages, with severe lack of water blighting the lives and livelihoods of 1.8 billion people. This is why Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, recommended, that water scarcity should be top of the international agenda.
The major factors that account for the increased use of water are population growth, industrialization and, especially, irrigation for agriculture. According to the Water Footprints of Nations which was published by the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, it takes 1,300 litres of water to create a kilogram of wheat. For rice it is almost 3,000 litres. For example, it will probably come as a surprise to many people to learn that it takes 2,000 litres of water to produce a glass of brandy and 42,500 litres to produce one kilo of beef. 400,000 litres of water are used to manufacture one car. The chemical, textile and paper industries are also water-hungry.
Chemicals in our water
Many of these industrial or agricultural chemicals pollute water and thus make it toxic and therefore dangerous for humans and other creatures. Some of these chemicals disrupt the endocrine system and therefore affect all aspects of human development from the embryo onwards. Because the chemical and pharmaceutical industries are so central to modern economies and so powerful, governments have been slow to investigate, regulate and ban these harmful substances.
Money also talks when it comes to water. In many rich countries, water is readily available from taps and some wealthy individuals have luxury swimming pools attached to their houses. The cost of water varies a lot. At the high end of the scale, people in Tanzania pay 5.7% of their daily wages on water. In Pakistan, it costs 1.1% of the daily wage. In Britain, the average yearly cost to a household for water and sewage services amounts to 0.013% of the average industrial wage. In the US, people pay as little as 0.006% of their wages on water.
Water and Health
Polluted water is one of the main causes of illness in poor countries. As a result, two million people, mainly in Africa, die needlessly each year from illnesses like diarrhoea, malaria, and other water-borne diseases. This is the equivalent of 10 jumbo jets crashing each day. One of the saddest statistics of all is that about 6,000 children die each day from water-borne diseases like gastro-enteritis. This figure is almost twice the number of people killed in the September 11th, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, which led to massive retaliation in Afghanistan and huge resources being poured into the war on terror. Unfortunately, there is no crusade to provide clean water for everyone on the planet despite the high death toll across much of the
Third World.
Water and World Peace
Today the water situation in the Middle East and North Africa is precarious. North Eastern China, Western and Southern India, Pakistan, much of South America and countries in Central America such as Mexico face water scarcity. 260 rivers flow through two countries or more in different parts of the world. Only a handful of these countries have signed treaties regulating their respective access to the water. As a result competition between adjacent countries for access to water resources is causing friction which could lead to outright hostilities in the future.
The conflict between Israel and Palestine is one of the running sores of our time. We know it has the potential to destabilise both the Middle East and the World. But the potential for water wars is not confined to Israel and Palestine. The Tigris – Euphrates river valley is another potential hot-spot. Turkey has spent $30 billion on dams and irrigation systems. This has forced countries situated downstream, like Syria and Iraq, to curtail their water requirements.
In 1989, Turkey threatened to cut water flow in the Euphrates because of Syria’s support for Kurdish guerrillas. It is no wonder that Ismail Serageldin, the World Bank’s vice-president for environmentally sustainable development, is on record as stating that many of the wars of the last century (20th) were about oil, but wars of this century (21st) will be about water. The prestigious business magazine Fortune (May 2000) concurs with this. It states that water promises to be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th century.
Water and the Christian Churches
Water plays a central role in the Bible. At the beginning of the Book of Genesis (Gen.1:1-2), we find God’s spirit hovering over the water. The author believed that Yahweh had the power to tame the area of most unpredictability – the oceans. We find this theme once again in Yahweh’s challenge to Job:
Who pent up the sea behind closed doors when it
leaped tumultuously out of the womb,
when I wrapped it in a robe of mist
and made black clouds its swaddling bands;
when I marked the bounds it was not to cross
and made it fast with bolted gate.
Come thus far and no farther:
here your proud waves shall break.
(Job 38:8 -11)
In the Book of Exodus, water is seen as a source of Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt. Yahweh drives back the sea to make an escape route for the Israelites and uses the returning waves as a way of punishing the Egyptians.
(Ex.14:21b- 31)
Water is seen as a source of health and abundance. One of the most powerful presentations of this teaching is to be found in Ezekiel 47:1 -12. The prophet extols the healing and life-giving qualities of clean water. It brings fruitfulness and abundance.
Living water is so important in the New Testament that Jesus applies the term to himself. In response to the surprise of the Samaritan woman who was taken aback by Jesus’ request for a drink he said:
If only you knew what God is offering
and who it is that is saying to you:
“Give me a drink”,
You would have been the one to ask,
and he would have given you living water. (Jn.4:10)
In reply the Samaritan woman expresses surprise at how Jesus, who has no bucket, could give her water. She also wonders whether Jesus is on a par with Jacob, the patriarch who gave them the well and used it himself. Jesus replied:
Whoever drinks this water
will get thirsty again;
but anyone who drinks of the water that I shall give
will never be thirsty again;
the water that I shall give
will turn into a spring inside him,
welling up to eternal life.
(Jn.4:10, 13, 14)
In the New Testament, Christ’s own baptism in the Jordan is linked to his mission to bring about justice and peace for all. The Benedictine Killian McDonnell describes the cosmic dimension of the baptism of Jesus. He recalls the writings of Gregory of Nazianzus (330 -389 AD) who had Jesus ‘carrying the cosmos with him as he ascended out of the water at the Jordan’. He continues: ‘The cosmic dimensions of the baptism of Jesus are part of antiquity’s broader conviction, rooted in the incarnation and resurrection, that the material world, as the home of a redeemed humanity, is destined for transfiguration through the power of the Spirit manifested in the risen body of Christ’.