BY TOM ODHIAMBO
A common injunction for healthy living addicts is drink eight glasses of water every day. The explanations for having to drink all that water are often not convincing but it is a maxim by which many poor souls and bodies live. Today those eight glasses have become so many litres of bottled water. Indeed there are children – and many be some adults – who don’t know how tap water tastes. For tap water – still the best water all over the world and a major source of much bottled water – is nowadays spoken of by arm-chair health experts as if it is poison!
But what is the cost – environmental, health, economic or natural resources – of producing, distributing and consuming bottled water? Probably this question isn’t even the most urgent. We need to be asking if there is enough potable water for the world population in a time of serious environmental degradation, a seeming rise in population and widespread socio-economic inequalities.
It seems that many countries in the world are experiencing desertification, especially in Africa whilst at the same time the available freshwater sources are declining; or local water (re)sources are bought by multinational corporations and priced beyond the reach of the poor. Yet the media only pick up and pursue stories about water scarcity occasionally.
That seeming inattention to the story of dwindling fresh water may become a costly mistake in many parts of the society in the near future. For many environmental and natural resources experts warn that water may be the cause of major intra- and international conflicts in the future. If you read Alex Prud’homme’s book, The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-first Century (2011) you might just think twice about how you use water next time. Prud’homme writes about water scarcity with a seeming singular aim to educate, inform, warn and finally proffer probable solutions to this impending global disaster.
The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-first Century is mainly about America and the freshwater deficit it is facing and how it may innovate to live with the lack in many parts of the country. However, Prud’homme also refers to the rest of the world, citing specific cases across the globe where water shortage, disputes over water (re)sources and innovative use of available water are changing lives. The book has five chapters: Quality: What is in our water; Drought: A creeping disaster; Flood: Come hell or high water; Water in the twenty-first century: conflict and innovation. I wish to reflect briefly on each of these topics in relation to Kenya. As for The Ripple Effect, you’d better buy it in local bookshops and read it during the end of the year holidays. It is worth your money and time.
Quality. More than a decade ago there was a scandal in Nairobi about someone selling the city water company chalk for water treatment. It is a horrifying thing to suspect, leave alone to know for sure, that the water you drink, cook with, bathe in and use everyday could be untreated or polluted. Yet, this is possibly the reality of much of the water used in cities all over the world. Despite the general assurances made to consumers, very few cities globally would guarantee that the water they supply to consumers is potable. And yet water no one can live without water. Prud’homme warns that cities – and he cites American cities – are struggling with maintaining acceptable health standards in so far as treatment and supply of water to domestic users go. The reasons for the poor quality of piped water are many, including, poor or outdated treatment methods; underground pollution from chemicals used on farms and by industrial plants or chemicals in home products such as soaps and medicines; rusted or leaking pipes which lead to contamination; mining activities; oil drilling and processing etc.
The point that Prud’homme emphasizes in The Ripple Effect is that it is increasingly costly to access, process and supply affordable potable water to millions people all over the world. Yet the very nature of urbanization means that more people with the need for more people increase to be added globally but mostly to towns and cities all over the world.
Drought is a subject that Kenyans know well. Many parts of Kenya now suffer from the curse of cycles of water scarcity and too much water.
Poor rainfall may mean little or no replacement of underground water sources, plants drying up, excessive heat and more droughts. The water shortages due to drought often lead to search for more sources of water resulting in depletion of deep underground aquifers that act as general reservoirs for normal water wells. This exploitation of deep lying water resources simply means worsens future water deficiency.
Reports suggest that flooding displaces families in many parts of Kenya every year. But often the most affected Kenyans are the nomadic people in northern Kenya who bear endless days of drought, praying for rain, only to be hit by floods when the rains come. Flooding causes pollution of water, destroys crops and homes, displacing millions of people all over the world annually. Combined with degradation of the environment through human activities such as deforestation and poor farming activities, heavy rains lead to significant runoff.
The runoff often destroys water reservoirs, sewage plants and (waste)water-carrying pipes in cities. In villages depended on rivers and lakes, floods carry soil and waste into the systems, exposing millions of people to water-borne diseases. All these simply make the work of water-supplying companies and government difficult.
Water is likely to be one of the most expensive commodities this century. Or it is already. The cost of bottled water is already a burden in many ways. For instance, in some cases the bottled water is nothing but tap water that has undergone extra purification, packaged and sold as something beyond what is available at the tap. Bottled water is expensive because of the environmental pollution caused by the plastic bottles which aren’t recycled in many cases. Also, very few producers and users of bottled water understand the environmental implications of transporting it across seas and by road when local alternative is more affordable. In some cases bottled water, drawn from freshwater aquifers deep in the ground suck water from the water table leaving outlying community wells dry.
But beyond bottled water, Prud’homme argues that governments, companies that supply water to the public and the general public must begin to seriously innovate ways of conserving and preserving sources of water, treatment of water for domestic and industrial use and its distribution and lastly its use or consumption. Water wastage through leakages, excessive watering of lawns, carwashes, poor irrigation methods, shower systems, poorly maintained taps, water pipes leakages etc mean that nearly a third of the water supply in many cities is lost. This is an expense that humanity can’t afford as the sources of freshwater decrease.
Not many East Africans know that their use of River Nile and Lake Victoria water is already worrying Egypt – which hasn’t been subtle in threatening to ‘act’ to ensure its supply of water. The environmental degradation of the Amazon River is already a global concern because of the implication not just the harm to the ecosystem but mainly what it means for the water system.
A journey through many parts of Kenya will reveal tens of dead rivers – even previously permanent ones – which have left many communities thirsty and destroyed their livelihoods. Women in such communities spend inordinate time searching for water, firewood and food. Yet simple conservation efforts such as growing trees and reeds on riverbanks would have preserved these water sources. The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-first Century is an apt warning that that tap that you leave dripping at home may be the cause of a future war over drinking water.
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