The building of dams around the world have displaced millions of people in the 20th century. Water ways, aquafers, and natural irrigation channels are being dried up or pumped into plastic bottles and sold to us. That is like someone coming into your home, stealing your most prized family heirloom, wrapping it in a nice package and selling it back to you at 10x the price you paid for it in the first place.

Is it so hard to keep water healthy and accessible to everyone? It seems that more and more politicians are failing to stand up for what should be their jobs – to protect the basic security of citizens! There certainly is nothing more basic than water.

I just finished watching “FLOW: For love of water“. A documentary featured directed by Irena Salina. The movie takes a traditional documentary look at the perspective of water, as a free right for citizens, as free as the air and sun is. It exposes the multinational corporations who are exploiting people and creating scenarios of poverty and dependence on their product (which is really your product only it was extracted from your backyard and bottled).

The film also explores local heros and success stories for local communities winning out against the exploitation of their water sources. Most notably the case in Bolivia in 2005 when water was given as a right back to the public. Now I know thoughts of James Bond: Quantum of Solace come to mind here, but the truth is, companies with similar agendas do exist, and we all buy their products on a regular basis.

I liked how the movie is used as a platform to encourage the UN to adopt a new article, known as Article 31.

Article 31: Everyone has the right to clean and accessible water, adequate for the health and well-being of the individual and family, and no one shall be deprived of such access or quality of water due to individual economic circumstance.

This article would ensure governments comply with this basic human right. I would argue that the right should be extended to all living organisms, however this is an important first step. Follow this link if you want to sign the petition yourself.

In local news, a Calgary based NGO has been making waves across the world in their battle for affordable water and sanitation. CAWST (Center for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology) was founded in 2001 and has since impacted the lives of millions of people across 53 countries through awareness and simple water filtration technology.

Why has such a basic human need become such a controversial and complex issue?

I’d like to see some initiative in setting up community rain water harvesting schemes, greywater capture and filtration services (preferably as a means of irrigation rather than drinking consumption).

Plastic bags have become such an item of dependence that shop keepers simply don’t know what else to use for their goods and liquids. Rightly so, it will be an uphill battle, but the government is more sure than ever that this is the right step, and it will take time to adapt, however after the initial two month period, shopkeepers caught providing the bags could be fined upwards of 1 lakh rupees (roughly $2,000 USD) or upto 5 years of jail term.

With such a move we will begin to see a demand for cloth and glass making a comeback in India, as these two are the most viable alternatives to plastic bags. No doubt this would also spin off some R&D on bio-degradable plastics and weaning off of petroleum based plastic for the more carbon neutral alternative of bio plastics (soy, vegetable oil, corn stalk).

I wonder what the world would be like today if Ford was able to organize the plastics industry to build exclusively from soy and bioproducts rather than petroleum oil. Needless to say, world war 1 kick started the oil dependency in plastics movement.

A famous quote comes to mind that is so fitting, attributed to an ancient chinese proverb.

“When the winds of change are blowing, some people are building shelters, and others are building windmills.”