A World Without Water

Could you even imagine a world without water? It's one of the most important elements of life. We have the luxury of using it to cook, to clean, and to drink. In America there is an abundance of clean drinking water. You can go to essentially any faucet and be able to safely drink out of it. Around the world, there are countries who aren't anywhere close to being that lucky.

There are about 884 million people around the world who don't have access to clean water. We can go to the store and buy as many bottle of water that we want, while people in third world countries who aren't able to find a sustainable water source. The quantity and the quality of water are equally important. Water is one of the most efficient ways to carry illness and disease. Even if people have abundant amounts of dirty water, they still can't drink it due to the risk of dying anyway. 

Places like sub-Saharan Africa, with an extremely dry climate, suffer from lack of water. Women and children are usually the ones sent to walk miles and miles to find a small river or pond and carry back water for their families. They do this every day. Walking to and from a water source, which on average totals to 3.5 miles per day to get water. This water is, most of the time, filled with water-borne diseases that are being carried back into the homes of these people. It is estimated that 3.5 million people die from water-related illnesses each year. 

More than one half of all primary schools in developing countries lack access to clean water. Water not only affects health, but it affects education and the economy too. The main reason for the water crisis is due to treating water as a commodity. It has led to the privatization and control of the water supply by corporations. They sell water at outrageous prices that poor people can't afford, and they find themselves being shut out as prices of water increase. A study of water price in 2006 shows that water in Barranquilla, Columbia is almost six US dollars per cubic meter. In New York, on the same scale, water costs less than a dollar.

If privatization and commoditization of water was brought down to a minimum and wells with clean water were put up in villages, then maybe the global water crisis would decrease. It's not an unobtainable goal, but it's difficult to do that. Organizations have been working in villages to set up supplies of clean water for people to have access to. It's not like it isn't happening, people are out there trying to help. But at the rate that the world is growing, we can't seem to be helping fast enough. In the next 20 years it is estimated that the amount of people without access to clean, safe water will increase by two-thirds. So the question is, what can we do to help and how long will it be before it's too late?