Originally published 22 April 2003
During the third week of March [2003], 10,000 delegates from around the world met in Japan for the UN-sponsored World Water Forum.
Of the many problems afflicting humanity, few are more serious than the chronic and growing shortage of clean water for drinking, sanitation, and agriculture.
A billion people do not have access to safe water. Three billion people have inadequate sanitation. Up to 7 million people die each year from water-related diseases.
Over the next two decades, unless something is done, the average supply of water per person will drop by a third, reports the science journal Nature. More disease and hunger will follow. Virtually all of Africa, South Central Asia, and parts of South and Central America are afflicted.
United Nations officials had hoped the important gathering in Japan would raise the world’s consciousness of the water crisis, and motivate governments of the developed world to help. Unfortunately, the war in Iraq knocked the conference right out of public view.
This newspaper carried a story on the impending World Water Forum on March 15. On March 19, the war began. There was no further notice in these pages of what happened in Japan. Only science journals gave the conference the attention it deserved.
Ironically, Iraq is one of those nations most severely afflicted by water shortages. Only about half the population of that country have access to adequate water, and the percentage of diseases caused by impure water is among the highest in the world.
Some estimates put the cost of the war in Iraq and its aftermath as high as several hundred billion dollars. I’ll leave it to the folks on the op-ed page to debate the justice of the war, but as a scientifically informed citizen, I have to wonder if this is the most humane and effective expenditure of our tax dollars.
Imagine what a few billion dollars could do to address the global water crisis. What is required is not sophisticated technology, but cheap, low-tech composting toilets, drip-irrigation systems, portable water purifiers, and solar-powered desalinization plants.
Americans seem happy to allocate colossal sums of money on war. But would Congress appropriate even $10 billion on supplying pure water to developing nations? Would Americans be willing to work with the United Nations to solve a crisis that in one way or another affects all of humanity? Given our recent track record, I rather doubt it.
The truth is that investing our money in international solutions to global problems — the water crisis, AIDS in Africa, malaria, population control, education (of women especially) — might be the most effective way to win friends for America, diminish the threat of terrorism, and undermine tyrannical regimes.
In the current issue of Orion magazine, America’s farmer-poet-philosopher Wendell Berry points out what should be obvious but we seldom consider — that waging peace is more likely to serve our national interests than waging war. He writes: “Like war, [waging peace] calls for discipline and intelligence and strength of character, though it calls also for higher principles and aims. If we are serious about peace, then we must work for it as ardently, seriously, continuously, carefully, and bravely as we have ever prepared for war.”
Scientists have a necessary role in this task. So, too, do clever inventors and entrepreneurs who can contrive and produce low-technology, inexpensive solutions to problems such as the shortage of clean water. But nothing will happen until our government supports collaborative action with other developed nations and Americans show themselves as ready to spend on peace as on war.
In 2000, as part of the UN Millennium Development Goals, governments pledged to halve the number of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015. According to Nature, there is no chance of this goal being met.
Far more human lives would be saved and suffering alleviated by achieving this relatively modest goal than by taking out Saddam, and it can be done for less money. Why we are willing to spend our money on war but not on goals that will show America at its generous best is a mystery we should all ponder.
