Reviews & Press : : Water Watch - A Community Action Guide

WATER WATCH
A COMMUNITY ACTION GUIDE
Compiled by Abdur-Razzaq Lubis
Asia-Pacific People's Environmental Network
Paperback, 96 pages
$ 9.00 US, £5.00 UK, $13.00 Australia, $9.00 Africa
ISBN: 9839941607

Reviewed by Subir Ghosh

Till taught by pain, man knows not water's worth. - Byron

If you say "water" to an engineer, he thinks drainage, pipes, money, energy - but not life. - Hermann Knoflacher

In modern societies, water is taken for granted because it comes out when one turns on the tap and is drained away after use.. It is only when a water crisis hits one that people become aware of the maxim that "water is life."

Human beings are becoming thirstier by the day, consuming five times the amount of water today than 40 years ago. The average American consumes on an average 200 gallons per day, while a rural Kenyan might just use 1.3. Most people in the world would use no more than 13 gallons per day. In other words, Americans consume between 10 and 100 times the amount of water consumed by other inhabitants of the globe. Someone has even bothered to calculate the bizarre fact that if all the 20 million waterbeds in the United States were emptied, they would produce enough water to sustain a village in India for more than a year.

Everywhere in the world, household needs - drinking, washing and cooking - can be adequately met by less than 100 litres per person per day, roughly the amount used for an average shower. A hundred litres a day is equivalent to about 35 cubic metres per person per year. It requires 300 tonnes of water to grow an adequate diet for human beings annually - nearly a tonne a day. Conventional toilets use up to 2.5 gallons of water to flush. The average American household drains away 107,000 gallons of water annually, mostly from toilets and bathtubs. In any one year, a typical domestic user contaminates 13,000 gallons of clean water to flush away only 165 gallons of the body's wastes.

Water also brings death. Polluted air and, of course, water causes more deaths than any other environmental problem including asbestos, dioxins and nuclear wastes. In the United States, over 10,000 organic chemicals are synthesised, traces of all of which find their way, sooner or later, into rivers, streams, sewage treatment plants and water supplies. Add to these 100,000 man-made chemicals, 5 million chemical compounds and up to 40 million research chemicals, and what is left is a deadly concoction.

In developing countries, the problem of water-borne diseases is getting worse instead of better. Almost 80 per cent of diseases throughout the world are water-related. There are 1.2 million people suffering from diseases caused by drinking polluted water or transmitted by inadequate sanitation. Water pollution is becoming a serious threat to health, and even survival in many parts of Asia.

Of the 37 diseases that have been identified as the major causes of death in developing countries, 21 are water and sanitation related. More than two million children under the age of five in the third World die every year from drinking polluted water. Water-borne diseases account for more than 4 million infant and child deaths per year in developing countries. In just seven countries of the region where conditions are at their worst, diarrhoeal diseases alone kill 1.5 million children every year - which works out to 3 children every minute. The diseases associated with dams include schistomiasis (bilharzia), yellow fever, malaria, river blindness (onchocerciasis) and liver fluke infections.

More than 90 per cent of the world's water supply of drinkable water is groundwater. Over-extraction of groundwater has resulted in severe land subsidence in cities like Bangkok, Manila, Jakarta, Shanghai and others. Much of the world's drinking water is pumped from groundwater. Groundwater is often, but not invariably, less contaminated than surfacewater. Groundwater is renewed much more slowly than other water sources. Groundwater is renewed only once in 1,400 years. In over a third of the countries in the Asia-Pacific region, over-exploitation of groundwater has already caused problems such as production losses, land subsidence, saltwater intrusions and groundwater pollution.

Water scarcity is a result of excessive use. A combination of increased use and increased population produces water stress. The first signs of water stress usually involve conflicts between different types of water users, notably farmers, industry and urban population. In the battle for water, it is cities, not farmers, that usually win. Industry suffers next. Supplies of cooling water, and water for household needs, are usually the last to be cut back.

Water deprivation becomes more acute in the poor and slum areas of large Asian cities. In many parts of Asia, 'water-stressed' city-dwellers live without the minimum supply of water for their daily necessities. Lack of convenient water supplies puts great stress on families in developing countries. In most countries, the human population is growing but water availability is not. Most of this growth occurs in water-stressed countries.

Globally, 47 per cent of all land falls within international river basins, and nearly 50 countries on four continents have more than three-quarters of their total land in international river basins. As many as 214 basins are multinational. Almost 40 per cent of the world's population lives in international river basins. Many water-scarce regions share the basin of a major river system. Water resources shared by a number of countries is a cause of international conflicts, particularly in countries where water is scarce, and its use unregulated by treaty. Shortages of freshwater sharpen economic and political differences among countries, and contribute to increasingly unstable perceptions of national security.

Water Watch is a venture of journalist-activist Abdur-Razzaq Lubis for the Asia-Pacific People's Environmental Network. Lubis compiles water facts which everyone should know. He introduces the lay persons to the water cycle and the essential role of wetlands, and distils words of wisdom on water's central importance to life and spirituality. He presents a step-by-step guide on how to map out watersheds, how to conduct a field study and how to adopt a stream. Lubis highlights simple projects that can be undertaken by community-based organisations, youth and school groups.

There is a lot that can be done. A five-minute shower, for instance, with a standard shower head uses about 30 gallons; a low-flow showerhead cuts that amount in half to 15 gallons. Brushing teeth with the tap running uses 10 gallons of water; turning it off between rinses uses half a gallon or less. Shaving with the water on uses 20 gallons; filling a basin instead uses one. Eating habits too matter. Agriculture is the largest user of water - accounting for about 70 per ent of all withdrawn daily from aquifers in the United States. Much of this water is used to produce meat. A single pound of beef requires between 2,600 and 6,000 gallons of water; a pound of wheat or potatoes uses only 25. Eating less or no meat can contribute to significant water savings.

There is more. Especially, about wetlands and watershed. But, let us leave that for reading the actual book.