Commitment towards drinking water

November 25, 2016
By Osiris de Leon

Since the origins of civilization, humans have been located on the banks of main rivers, by the need and the obligation of access to clean water, and by that reason the first biblical texts called "Garden of Eden" to the only regional place where fresh water, fruits and vegetables were available, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers,   amid a vast and hostile desert, because the survival of every human being is depending on access to clean water and food.

Hence the commitment to ensure drinking water to every human being, in a world where the global population growth is exponential, represents a major challenge for political leaders and decision makers, as dividing the total volume of freshwater available in each region, by the total population of each region, it is clear that every day there is less water available for each human being, which is aggravated by the increase of chemical and bacteriological contamination of surface and groundwater, thus threatening the political stability and world peace, as each day will be greater conflicts over increasingly limited access to increasingly scarce drinking water.

 

It is clear that higher levels of pollution of surface and groundwaters in poor countries where much of the population of scarce economic resources is pushed to live in miserable bed, along rivers and streams, where there is no drinking water or basic sanitation, forcing the poor people to dispose of their organic wastes, laden with fecal bacteria, in the same water that people consume to try to survive, which produces all kinds of waterborne diseases that reduce significantly their life expectancies, and such risk is happening under the indifferent gaze of leaders and politicians whose basic objectives are to achieve or maintain political power over the human ladder of poor people persuaded to cast their vote in exchange for improvements in their living conditions, but once these politicians come to power they forget this human mass that served them ladder to ascend.

 

Latin America, India, Asia, Middle East, Africa and many small island territories have great challenges resulting from the commitment to supply drinking water for present and future generations, since the population, and the water demand, are growing, but freshwater sources are not growing in the same way, being clear that, as result of climate change, droughts will become longer and more severe, and will be forcing, more and more, to  rational use of groundwater, and given the absence of adequate sanitary sewers, and the absence of  adequate sewage treatment plants, each day will increase the bacterial contamination of surface and groundwater, while the rulers and political leaders are showing no signs of attention and concern over the seriousness of the problem, indicating that each day contaminated water is abundant, and clean water is scarce and expensive, and for that reason every day people will have more limited access to clean water, and every day more people will be sick from drinking contaminated water as the only water available in their environment of poverty, marginalization and social exclusion.

 

Many leaders argue that while there is a possibility of desalinating sea water need not worry about the shortage of drinking water, but the high cost of desalinating sea water, in relation to the low cost of freshwater, and voracity of business sector willing to privatize all sources of drinking water, represent major obstacles for poor people, that as receive very low income, they would be unable to pay the ever increasing cost of drinking water, and when the poor people will be limited in the access to drinking water, they will be able to generate social unrest, difficult to control, because free access to drinking water is a fundamental right for every human being, and as is mandatory for every government to guarantee to the entire population the access to drinking water.

 

The solution to the serious problems of the future water supply must go hand in hand with the reduction of extreme poverty, because extreme poverty forces many people to live in rivers side poverty belts where basic sanitation absence is bringing pollution of surface and groundwater, diseases, and destruction of neighboring biodiversity, and because by reducing water pollution we can get that drinking water availability will increase for tomorrow society, and, if at the same time population is trained to optimize the use of water in its basic requirements, and states that 150 liters of water per day is guaranteed, free of charge, for every citizen, and that the consumption  excess is charged with very high differential tariffs, then people will be forced to economize the water provided free of charge to not having to buy expensive water, because 150 liters of water per day is sufficient volume for the basic needs of a human being.

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