Global Ministry on Water Resources
Global Community Overall Picture
Drinking water is primordial human right
Drinking water sources
Water resources assessment
Water Security Index
Drinking water, clean air and food for all
You will find his contact information at the following location.
More funding is needed for safe water supply projects. The world situation concerning freshwater is critical. Water tables are diminishing on every part of the world. Water quality and availability affect environmental quality for life support. Groundwater aquifers are more polluted. Water tables are falling on all continents, while human demand for water increases. Over 1 billion people lack safe driking water. Almost half of the world population does not have adequate sanitation. Most diseases in the developing world are water-related. If current trends continue, half the world could face water shortages by 2032. About 70% of freshwater withdrawals is for agriculture. The quality of the soil for agriculture is also decreasing worldwide.
Agricultural practices must be changed to get more crop per liter of water by:
* developing plants that are drought-hearty and more tolerant to a lesser quality of the soil
The lack of potable water and availability of water for agriculture use will contribute to the cause of conflicts between nations. In order to avoid conflicts over water, other actions have to be taken:
* investing in reforestation and in watershed management
Government regulations of the water resource make everyone use water wastefully. Agricultural water subsidies encourage farmers to waste water. The effect of this trend will make it harder for poor people to obtain water. Water quality is affected by contaminants such as hormones, pesticides and drugs.
Countries in Latin America & the Caribbean
Water purification is a major problem in most urban areas. The laws are not effective and people are not educated to be efficient in the use of water. Water conflicts are unavoidable in Mexico, Sao Paulo, Bogota, and Buenos Aires. Attempting to resolve water problems would require:
* moving population to middle-sized cities
Almost half of the African population does not have access to freshwater. Many cities have no running water. Several factors affect the water resource: siltation, desert encroachment, tribal wars, and high population growth. Water conflicts are unavoidable.
Western Europe has no major water problems. The EU manages water issues. Organic farming is becoming more popular because it costs less than removing farm chemicals from water supplies. Most of the current water distribution infrastructure needs replacing. In Eastern Europe nations, mining and timber industries affect water quality. Water mismagement is a major problems everywhere. Russia has even abolished its environmental protection agency.
Asia & Oceania
Japan developed the technology to change seawater into drinking water. Nations of the Middle East are buying their technology. Israel and other nations produce water through desalination. Water in the Middle and Near East has shrunked substantially and water conflicts are unavoidable. Australia and New Zealand have no major problem with water. Rivers of Asia have 20 times the standard levels of suspended solids, and the region is responsible for over 60% of the world's ocean-damaging, ecosystem-destroying sediment flows. Water problems in China are increasingly alarming. China has 22% of the world's population and has to survive on only 7% of the world's total freshwater resources. Today, there are more than 300 major Chinese cities plus 50 million people in rural areas facing water shortage. More education is needed to explain to the Chinese people that polluted water causes illness which in turn increases health costs and hinders development.
For centuries we have found it necessary to control water so as to have
it where we wanted it.
Water in the home comes from either spring water, a deep well, a river or a city reservoir, and is never 'pure'. If water was untreated, it would contain man-made contaminants, minerals, gases, salts, and microorganisms, which would cause unacceptable taste or health risks. Hazardous compounds present in water are mercury, lead, agricultural chemicals, arsenic, organochlorine compounds formed by the chlorine added to municipal water to destroy microorganisms, industrial pollutants, solvents, pesticide, fertilizer, and other contaminants. Our body absorbs equally these contaminants through drinking water or while bathing. City water is regulated for health hazards and does not contain dangerous bacterial contamination. It may contain chemical contaminants from industrial discharge or hazardous waste disposal, vinyl chloride from P.V.C. plastic pipe.
Most people take for granted the water we use to wash the car,
to water the lawn, cook and flush our wastes away, to shower, do half-loads of laundry, run the water while brushing our teeth, and ignore a dripping tap, and dump down the drain motor oil, solvents, paints, cleaners. We treat oceans, rivers, lakes, and streams more like parts of our sewer system them our life-support system. We are being
made use to this behavior from childhood while watching television. We often see commercials on TV showing a person washing an automobile or spraying a lawn wastefully and without care. There is also too much violence shown on television and in cinemas,
and nothing in the movies is aimed at educating people on the proper respect for water. We think it is right, our right to be as we are. The entire television networks and film makers and producers over the world should be re-educated in what is right and what is not. They should be responsible and be made accountable for the
counter-educating commercials and products they are advertising
on their networks. What the school system is doing in educating children is being negated by the television networks and film making industry. It is counter-productive and, at the end, the costs hit the taxpayers at home, one way or the other. The Polluter-pays Principle should apply to television networks and film making industry. They may use Human Rights for their defence but they should pay all the costs of the impacts of their advertisings and mindless production. They create behavioral patterns in the
general population from childhood and they should be billed big time.
As individuals, we can make changes in our ways of using water and dispose of wastes, both inside our homes and outdoors, and find ways to conserve and protect our water supplies. Water conservation is a means to ensure that there will be enough water for future generations.
Good quality of water supplies to satisfy our lifestyle carries a price tag defined here:
P(water) = P(storing) + P(distributing) + P(treatment) +
P(maintaining and operating) + P(e,h)
The costs of obtaining, storing, heating, distributing water are
steadily increasing, and so are the environmental and health impacts associated with those costs. The costs for treating wastewater to make it suitable to return to river systems are equally increasing and many communities now charge residents an extra fee for treating wastewater. Consumption rates vary largely from one community to
another, and between urban and rural areas. Some communities have been forced to restrict water consumption for short periods of time.
Human rights are those that individuals have by virtue of their very existence as human beings: to live, eat, drink fresh water, breath fresh air, have shelter. Just as human beings have human rights, they also have moral, legal responsibilities and related obligations and accountabilities. Every person needs Oxygen to live so clean air is certainly a primordial human right by our very nature. A large part of our body is made of water and we could not live without water; therefore water is also a primordial human rights by our very nature.
Fresh water resources and clean air are therefore proposed to be categorized as human rights.
Human actions constantly modify the hydrological cycle and also constantly pollute available water. The hydrological balance is changed by:
A Water Resources Assessment is a prerequisite for sustainable development and management of a country's water resources. It provides the basis for a vast range of activities:
* Domestic and industrial water supply
The existing and future uses of water are constantly challenged; balancing supply and demand is made even harder by the amounts of pollution found in the air, land and waters. Pollution is widespread and people are dying because of it. As soon as more pollution is added into the fresh water systems than people and all life die. This is true even with the best system in the world. We live on the edge. Rainwater could carry pollution to the fresh water supply, and it is too late.
Today there are a multitude of pollution sources and just to name a few:
* Animal manure
Water pollution varies in severity from one region to the next depending of the density of urban development, agricultural and industrial practices and the presence or absence of systems for collecting and treating the waste waters.
It is necessary to measure the water's quality, quantity and biological characteristics in every country. A lot of the data in the global hydrological network dedicated to measuring these elements are missing. It is non-existent in most developing countries. Data on water use are also scarce.
Global demand for water is rising. The rise will accelerate into the future because the world population is expected to reach 8.2 billion by the year 2024.
Despite the efforts of worldwide organizations to improve the water services of the developing countries, in 1995 some 20 per cent of the globe's population of 5.7 billion people still lacked a safe and reliable water supply, and 50 per cent were without adequate sanitation. Lack of these services is the basic reason why more than a billion people live in poverty.
Even though regulations have been imposed by governments in the industrialized countries to protect their nations' water resources, people are still dying. This is due to the fact that regulations are not enforced as well as they should, regulations are not tough enough, and people dont care and often challenge them their own ways. We basically live on the edge. No safety net!
Human health is dependent on a wholesome and reliable supply of water and safe sanitation. It has been estimated that at any given time about half the people living in developing countries are suffering from water-related diseases caused directly by infection, or indirectly by disease-carrying organisms that breed in water. Diarrhoea. infections by parasitic worms, river blindness and malaria are among the most widespread of these diseases. More than five million people are estimated to die each year from diseases related to inadequate sanitation and hygiene practices, and drinking polluted water.
In the developed world there is concern about the health effects of exposure to various chemicals in drinking water. Pollutants can build up in shellfish to the point that they harm the people who eat them.
The effects of pollution on wildlife are better observed: death, population decline, reduced success of hatching, birth defects for the birds, fish and other forms of life in rivers, lakes, wetlands and deltas.
The Water Scarcity Index is the water use as a percentage of the available water resource. It can be shown that the margin between the global available resource and the volume of water used is going to diminish in the future. Population growth is the major factor. By the year 2024, the regions of stress will include two thirds of the world's population. By 2050, they will cover most of the globe. As the crisis approaches and as water resources become scarcer, the risk of conflict over them will become greater. After 2024, climate change will make conditions worse if precipitation amounts decrease in the major food producing regions and evaporation rates increase. With 50 per cent more people to feed than in 1999, the volume of water needed for food production is expected to increase by 50 to 100 per cent. The bulk of the increase in food production will come from irrigation which, in turn, will require more money to be spent on long distance water transfers and dams. There will be greater competition for these waters. The cost of water will certainly rise.
In order to avoid conflicts and wars over water, The Earth Community Organization is proposing to make water at the top of its agenda. Better understanding and much more data are needed. All nations need to assess their water resources and make projections for the future. Water resources must be managed. We propose here to make fresh water a human right. We have also discussed the human need for clean air in the article on Climate Change, the Proceedings of the World Congress, and in previous Newsletters. There are more than enough facts that show solid proof for the nedd to make clean air a human right as well.
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