Water: The Truth of It All
Earlier this week, I received notice from my apartment manager that the water would be shut off for a few hours to do maintenance work. Panic is too strong of a word to describe what I felt, but it was unsettling knowing I’d be without water for three hours.
Suddenly it seemed absolutely necessary to have water at my ready disposal. A hundred “what if” scenarios ran through my head. Not having ready access to water is a problem I’m not used to.
Of course, you can imagine the irony I felt when I was told my assignment this week was to research water shortages as it relates to climate change. Almost every article I came across on the topic of “water scarcity” started with a line similar to this: “Water is the most fundamental necessity for all human life.”
Oh really? I had no idea. Thanks for that.
But it’s true, and as climate change begins to transform our earth and our atmosphere, water is becoming less available than it already is. As temperatures increase, fresh water becomes less accessible and surface sources (lakes, rivers, ponds, etc) dry up. Not only that, but dry seasons stick around longer with hotter days. So when it does rain, the rains are usually heavier, but the ground is so dry that rather than being soaked into the ground, which helps replenish underground reservoirs, it runs along the surface and causes flooding.
The UN’s Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) produced a report this year looking at world water supplies and how it relates to development and job creation (or lack thereof). The report projected that, if climate change and population growth continues on their respective trajectories, only 60% of the world will have access to clean, reliable freshwater sources. 60%!
Let me put that in perspective for you:
Today, there are roughly 7.6 billion individuals crowding the earth’s surface. Of those 7.6billion, 748million lack complete access to safe drinking water. If you still can’t wrap your head around that number, that’s more than double the population of the US. Africa possesses roughly 9% of the world’s freshwater resources and 11% of the world’s population. That means about 220 million people in Africa go without fresh water on a regular basis. That’s a huge number of people but it pales when compared to the 1.7 billion people in Asia and the Pacific who live without reliable access to potable water.
Now these figures only relate to people’s ability to access clean water. I won’t get into other water-related issues because, well, there is just too much information to make sense of it all. The other issues include agriculture (as a food source and the leading source of employment in the world), disease, floods, droughts, famines, hurricanes, increased rainstorms, healthcare, economic losses, sanitation, transportation.
Basically, lack of water is a really, really big problem. Those researchers weren’t kidding when they said, “Water is the most fundamental necessity for all human life.”
But what if water isn’t only the source of life, but also a cause of death?
The more I researched this topic, the more aware I became of the correlation between water and conflict. That is, it’s no coincidence that regions of our world that experience the most conflict are the areas that lack readily available water sources.
Pacific Institute has put together a comprehensive database outlining the water conflict after years of extensive research headed by Peter Gleick, a world-leading expert on the “water wars.”
For over five years, Israel withheld access to basic water supplies to Palestinians in the West Bank, hindering the development of the Palestinian city of Rawabi. The dispute is part of an overall conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Since 2011 alone, Israel has waged five significant attacks on Palestinian water sources as a form of military aggression. These conflicts have resulted in loss of crops, forced urban migration, major damage to sewage systems, and the destruction of water treatment plants, which has lead to the direct and indirect loss of hundreds of lives.
A couple thousand miles to the east, water scarcity and more frequent record-setting hot days in India has caused major water disputes between local and state officials. Civilians scramble against each other for access to drinking water. Over the last several years, military tensions between India and Pakistan in the Indus Basin have resulted in major development damages and water shortages, as dams have been destroyed due to treaty violations existing between the countries.
More recently, airstrikes in Syria caused major damages to a water treatment plant which four million individuals depend for daily water sources. In December 2015, 1.3 million people living in rural areas were still experiencing daily interruptions to their water supply due to internal pipeline damage.
You hear of wars being fought over religious differences, the lust for power, and land disputes, but water?
The UN says, “The right to safe drinking water…is a prerequisite and integral to the realization of other human rights, most notably the rights to life and dignity.” As a senior in college who is becoming more aware of the world, I’m learning that neither of those things is true in the world we live in. Life, like water, has become a privilege.
Here’s a glimmer of hope: Jesus said he is the Living Water, that whoever drinks from his cup will never be thirsty again. That means that despite all the grief, mourning, and heartache we may experience in this world at the hands of injustice, brokenness, and terror, there will come a day when Jesus will wash all of this clean. In the end, he will be our sole source of life, and it will flow abundantly.
Until then, what can we as Christians?
Of course, there’s no cookie cutter answer to this. It’s a question of theology and philosophy, and everyone differs in opinion. God’s love for us compels us to show our love for him, his creation, and his children. Jesus called us to care for the “least of these” (Matt 25:40), a love that often takes the shape of doing advocacy on behalf of our world’s most marginalized.
I hold to the truth that he is love, compassion, selflessness, generosity, humility, basically all those wonderful fruits of the Spirit. I believe that he is the source of all that, and that these are the things that bring beauty to life. Seeking goodness and choosing love unprejudiced is life in the Spirit.
When water scarcity and natural disasters occurs from climate change, or when States use water sources to control people or rage attacks on enemies, my soul grieves, and it is right for me to do so. Grieving is the act of recognizing that something in our world should not be the way that it is.
But my heart doesn’t ruminate on these things. I would be lying if I said it doesn’t change the way I live. More than ever, I strive to live justly, for the love, grace, mercy, and kindness that gives meaning to life, in the hope that, in some small way, it brings even the smallest amount of beauty to the world.
Because that is what hope is: knowing that, in the face of grief, life doesn’t have to be this way.
by Rebekah Potts
Policy Research Intern, Micah Challenge USA
@bekahjpotts
