Clean Farming, Clean Water
World Water Day, whether you mark it today March 20 or on Saturday March 22, has sanitation as its theme this year. Among readers in the developed world, I can hear the yawns already. You take a shower, and the water flows down the drain. You flush the toilet, and the sewers take the effluent to that round concrete plant in some forgotten part of town. Out of sight, out of mind.
But even for those of us fortunate enough to live in places with such infrastructure and plentiful water supplies, today should be a day to pause and reflect on how safe our water really is. And at what cost.
Today's "Ouest-France" (France's largest regional newspaper, read by rural and small town people in Brittany, which we're currently visiting) carries an article in its Agriculture section that I hope lots of farmers (and politicians) will read. "How the Germans Are Getting Their Pure Water Back," by Anne-Francoise Roger, recounts how the introduction of organic farming techniques in a part of Bavaria in 1991 has led to dramatic improvements in water quality for the city of Munich. Not only are nitrate and pesticide pollution down by significant levels (the former by some 43%), but the cost to the city of Munich - which purchases the organic produce for use in its city administration and school cafeterias - is a fraction of what French towns must pay to rid their water of nitrates. Water costs have risen so much after years of privatization that recent electoral gains by Socialists (notably in Paris) have led to calls for returning to municipally-owned public utilities.
Brittany, with its rolling green countryside, also has a smelly underside: with its intensive industrial poultry and porcine production, its water is among France's (and Europe's) most polluted. This time of year, liquid manure is sprayed over fields in huge quantities - I swear we smelled it as we were driving into Brittany yesterday. What settles on the fields is absorbed by the crops, and the excess flows into the streams, and to the sea. Finistere's wonderful coastline, rocky and rugged with miles-wide beaches appreciated by tourists, is at risk from the slimy green algae that thrives in the nitrate-rich waters. And whatever treatment those sewage and water plants perform, you still want to reach for bottled mineral water during mealtime.
War & Peace and Water
With their plentiful rain, Bretons may be excused if they are not as conscious as they should be of the quality of their water. Not the case with Israelis and Palestinians, whose populations crowd into a seemingly arid corner of the world. Peter Snowdon, a documentary film maker friend whose "Drying Up Palestine" should be World Water Day essential viewing, sent me a recent article about a German hydro geologist active in Israel-Palestine water issues, Clemens Messerschmid. Amira Hass' article in Haaretz is worth reading for this factoid alone:
In Berlin and Paris, he notes, annual rainfall is less than in Jerusalem and Ramallah, respectively: 550 millimeters in Berlin compared to 564 millimeters in Jerusalem. Paris gets an average of 630 millimeters, while the yearly average in Ramallah was 689.6 millimeters.
But Messerschmid documents how wasteful practices (using sprinklers for agriculture, allowing wastewater to flow into the sea, "making Israel one of the biggest polluters of the Mediterranean") negate these natural advantages. And then you add the political aspect:
"Wherever Israel is located downriver, it uses military force to ensure that most of the water that flows in that river will reach Israel. It takes over the Golan, it threatens wars, and in the West Bank it uses military orders to prohibit the drilling of wells. What's going on here is not cooperation, but the dictation of an unequal division. Just imagine if Holland were to force Germany not to use the waters of the Rhine."
On World Water Day, which this year coincides with Easter Weekend, let's consider the importance of water - how it's safeguarded and who controls it - as one of the most crucial war & peace issues of this century. What better place to get it right than in the crucible of "The Holy Land," where equitable access to water will make all the difference to Palestinian and Israeli peaceful (or not) coexistence.