Heald is an agricultural columnist based in Ottawa.
“An issue with important implications for human development and global poverty reduction is how to manage water resources to meet rising food needs while protecting the access of poor and vulnerable people to the water that sustains their livelihoods.”
Among the 420 pages of the 2006 United Nations Human Development Report are 25 pages dealing with water competition in agriculture. It starts off with a quote from former South African president Nelson Mandela, who told the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development: “Among the many things I learned as president was the centrality of water in the social, political and economic affairs of the country, the continent and the world.”
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Canadians are in a difficult position when it comes to the world water debate. We have access to more of the world’s fresh water than any other country on earth. It is hard to get our minds around a situation where girls can’t go to school because they have to spend a large part of their day walking someplace where they can obtain water and carrying it back to their village.
Nevertheless, the concern over declining fossil fuel resources pales into insignificance compared to the problem of ensuring that more than six billion people on the planet have access to enough water to meet their food and sanitation needs.
The amount of water I run through the little humidifier in my bedroom on a cold, dry winter day would more than meet the needs of a rural family in Zambia or Mali.
The amount of water that runs down the drain while I wait for the water from the tap to get cold enough to drink or warm enough to wash my hands would make the difference between food security and a crop failure if it could be diverted onto a small farm in Bangladesh.
While brushing my teeth in a cup of water or saving the water in which I cook my vegetables to put on my flower garden might show some empathy with people in water-starved regions of the world, it wouldn’t do anything to solve the problem.
Reducing my daily water consumption by 10 or 20 gallons will save only a few cents on my bimonthly water bill.
But there must be something I can do.
The UN Development Report calls on the G8 leaders for leadership in facing the world water crisis.
Surely by now we all realize that calling on the G8 leaders for anything is like spitting in the wind. They are politicians preoccupied with winning the next election. They can’t even muster the guts to increase their overseas development spending to a modest 0.7 percent of Gross Domestic Product.
When former prime minister Lester Pearson proposed the 0.7 percent figure, Canada’s aid spending was at 0.5 percent. Now it is down to less than 0.3 and spending on agriculture and rural development has suffered most under the decline.
Yet among the world’s poorest and hungriest are subsistence farmers and landless farm workers. Water is often the key. Even in very poor countries, farmers with access to irrigation water are 20 to 30 percent better off than farmers who must rely on rainfall only.
Maybe we can’t get the water from our turbulent Canadian rivers over to the African and Asian deserts, but we can use our great wealth as a nation to develop clean water resources and irrigation systems where people are dying from hunger and disease.
Whether it is twisting the arms of our members of Parliament to get more money into the aid budget, or digging deeper into our own pockets to support Oxfam, World Vision, CUSO or any one of the hundreds of non-governmental organizations at work overseas, there is something we can do.
Some agencies take Canadian farmers overseas where their expertise can be put to use in training and developing friendships with their colleagues in other countries.
The International Federation of Agricultural Producers has learned that strong grassroots farmer organizations in every country is one of the surest ways to ensure that poor countries increase their production and farmers’ incomes and generate food security.
Most Canadian farmers are indirectly members of IFAP, which needs lots of support so it has the clout it needs to stand up to totalitarian governments that don’t allow their farmers freedom to organize. It also needs a stronger voice in its meetings with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
It is true that the amount of water on the planet is finite and we are polluting it at a great rate. We have the money, the expertise and the technology to clean it up.
All we need is the wisdom to apply them and the political will to get at it.
