Water Consciousness –
How we all have to change to protect our most critical resource
By: Tara Lohan
In the book Water Consciousness, you’ll see a phrase repeated, “We all live downstream.” We are connected to each other by our dependence on water and our participation in its use. Over time, water has been our world’s architect—carving and sanding stone, breathing life into forests, testing the patience of deserts. But water has also been the architect of our communities, enabling us to put down roots along the banks of rivers and build lives as deep as our wells.
How we use or abuse our water resources has shaped the kinds of communities we live in and the land that surrounds them. Today, as our world heats up, as pollution increases and population grows, and as our globe’s resources of freshwater are strained, we are faced with an environmental and humanitarian problem of mammoth proportions.
Demand for water is doubling every 20 years, outpacing population growth twice as fast. Currently 1.3 billion people don’t have access to clean water and 2.5 billion lack proper sewage and sanitation. According to estimates, demand for freshwater will exceed the world’s supply by more than 50 percent in less than 20 years.
We need to change. Now. This problem affects every one of us, and to implement solutions we need help from every one of us, too. That means rethinking our individual water habits. It also means mobilizing communities and putting the brakes on a system that is hurtling us towards ecological disaster. We cannot continue our current rates of mass consumption and pollution or the increasing commodification of water. We need a new consciousness. We need to change the way we think about water.
Today, as our world heats up, as pollution increases and population grows, and as our globe’s resources of freshwater are strained, we are faced with an environmental and humanitarian problem of mammoth proportions.
But how does change happen? How do we change individual and government behavior? And more importantly, what will it take to motivate the major shifts in attitudes and operations of the huge corporations and leaders of countries that are mostly responsible for creating the crisis we face?
Some think that change happens only when people are scared by grim reality. Others insist that we must think positively. The truth is we need both. Reading this book will likely make you feel discouraged, such as in Wenonah Hauter’s writings in Chapter 6 about the enormous waste and devastation produced by factory farms and agribusiness, the world’s thirstiest water user.
But at the same time, great movements for change are gaining momentum each day. As Deborah Kaufman and Alan Snitow write in Chapter 4, a grassroots movement is spreading across the globe that has already won some major victories, especially against powerful international water companies that are trying aggressively to take over local water supplies.
This book is a journey along the path for change, as well. As water makes its way through our world, from ice-capped mountains to rivers to oceans, we will also travel in our understanding of the water crisis and what we can do.
The first step is to truly grasp the extent of the crisis, to learn the hard facts—however difficult it may be to face them. The book is divided into four sections—the first is Water Scarcity. Chapters in this first section provide an overview of how much water we have left and how we got ourselves into this mess. This section also explores tough questions about how prepared we are for facing drought, and what tools we can use to get ourselves onto a more sustainable path.
The second part of the book, Water Inc., looks at how this crisis is being exacerbated by the commodification of water. This includes the growing threat to public control of water by the privatization of municipal systems and the ballooning bottled water industry. Authors also detail the rise of grassroots movements against these forces.
This growing corporate threat also extends to the food we eat and how it is grown, as well as the construction of massive infrastructure like dams, which are exacerbating our water crisis, displacing communities, and destroying ecosystems.
These first two sections are that part of the change equation that has more to do with facing the hard facts.
But in the third section, Water Solutions, we present the solutions that are already being put into practice and how we can take part, beginning with first understanding the watershed that we each live in.
This section also examines a number of communities that are working on solutions—including ancient techniques, basic conservation measures, new technology, and the best help nature has to offer.
In the final section, the Water Future, we take these tools and combine them with some of the most important principles for water consciousness—recognizing the sacredness of water, working to ensure water as a human right for all people, and developing a water ethic to guide us in our actions.
Combined, the authors lay out the hard road ahead of us, but they also provide a road map to get us to a better place—a new consciousness that will enable us to protect and preserve our most important resource. Woven throughout the text are images of what this crisis and its solutions look like across the world.
Of course, we can only do so much reading and so much looking. Then it is time to put down the book and
get busy doing. The end of this book contains a list of necessary actions for a healthy water future. But these are nothing without people behind them.
The writers in this book, are counting on the readers of Water Consciouness to become water warriors, change agents—people who know the facts and are willing to step up to reverse our direction. Help us get back to respecting water and its deep and inspiring role as the architect of our communities and ecosystems. It may very well be the most important thing you do.
For more information or to purchase this book, visit www.waterconsciousness.org.