This week’s SoroptiVoice comes from Ruth Dodd, SIGBI‘s Assistant Programme Director for the Environment. Ruth joined SI in 1997 and is a member of Amber Valley Club in Derbyshire, England. Here she talks about the challenge of global water shortages and what Soroptimists can do to help. It’s World Environment Day on June 5th so the topic of this blog could not be more perfect!
The amount of water in the world is
limited. The human race, and the other species which share the planet, cannot
expect an infinite supply. To reflect this reality, on 28th July 2010
the General Assembly declared that safe and clean drinking water and sanitation
is a human right essential to the full enjoyment of life and all other human
rights.
However, the world’s supply
of fresh water is running out. One person in five has no access to safe
drinking water. In general the
lack of safe drinking water is experienced in developing countries but in the
developed world we also run the risk of running out of fresh water. We are
using fresh water faster than it can be replenished.
Water is continually moving through the environment –this is the water
cycle. Water evaporates from the oceans, condenses into clouds and then falls
on the land surface as rain, only to flow into rivers and back into the sea.
Rainfall also reaches rives by soaking into the ground and trickling down wards into the rocks, becoming
groundwater.
Pumping too much groundwater can cause rivers to dry up and
the level of lakes to fall unacceptably low.
Individuals
in the United States use an average of 500 litres of water per day, those in
Canada an average of 300 litres per day and those in England an average of 200 litres per day. Remember, these amounts are PER PERSON!
In the developing world the average water consumption is only 10 litres of water
each day.
We
have two challenges: to provide access to water for those people who currently do
not have access and to reduce our own water consumption.
95% of the United States’ fresh
water is underground. As farmers in the Texan High Plains pump groundwater
faster than rain replenishes it, the water tables are dropping. Farmers in
Texas are stopping irrigating their land.
Trying to
manipulate the water supply has had severe consequences in Australia where a
scheme to reverse the flow of the Snowy River has backfired, threatening to
deprive Adelaide of fresh water. The region that the diverted Snowy River now
feeds is bounded by Australia’s two longest rivers, the Murray and the Darling.
The water tables under this land are now rising, pushing deadly quantities of
salt to the surface. The salt has already destroyed some of the country’s most
productive farmland. The Murray-Darling basin produces three-quarters of
Australia’s irrigated crops. Many of the basin’s tributaries may be unusable
for irrigation in 20 years time, let alone as a source of drinking water.
In 2009 World
Water Day focussed on Transboundary water. It is thought that disputes over
water supplies could be the cause of wars in the future.
Turkey has been
accused by Syria and Iraq of depriving them of much-needed water, as it
continues to build a series of dams along the Euphrates and Tigris. It is also
embarking on an ambitious project to sell water from its Manavgat river across
the Middle East.
In the face of all this, what are
Soroptimists doing about water?
Soroptimist
International of Europe have an ongoing project “Soroptimists go for water”.
This has been their focus for the past few years and many fantastic projects have come out of their work on this issue. SIGBI celebrated their 75th anniversary year with a joint project with WaterAid
to provide clean water and sanitation. On an ongoing basis many UK clubs raise
funds for WaterAid.
Several clubs work with their friendship links to provide
clean water and sanitation especially for girls’ schools where lack of
lavatories can prevent girls attending school. “Loos for Lynn” was a project in
memory of past SIGBI and International President Lynn Dunning which ran in 2010.
Projects being funded are toilets for a woman and baby unit in Bamenda
Cameroon, a women’s centre in Kampala Uganda, a rural school in Bulawayo
Zimbabwe, and an adult literacy school in Lagos Nigeria. In the UK SI Stafford
have a project to reduce personal water consumption.
There are many ways to reduce water consumption – all actions count!
Some links of interest:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/world/2000/world_water_crisis
Ruth Dodd – SIGBI Federation Assistant Programme Director Environment
Join our Facebook discussion on Monday and remember, world environment day is June 5th so take a carbon neutral action! We’ll be posting an action statement for World Environment Day written by our SI UN Rep in Nairobi, Alice Odingo, later today on the news pages.