Recently in Water Category

"In this country of 42 million, nearly 12 million people have no access to clean water and four million have limited access, i.e. to a public faucet"

BOGOTA (IPS) - Sixty environmental, indigenous, labour and social organisations in Colombia are carrying out a campaign for a constitutional amendment that would make access to clean water a fundamental right.

The proponents of the initiative have already fulfilled the first legal requirement by collecting some 135,000 signatures, equivalent to five out of every 1,000 registered voters.
But they now face a bigger challenge.

Once the signatures are certified as valid by the Registraduría Nacional del Estado Civil (national registry), the organisations will have to gain the support of 1.5 million Colombians in order for Congress to call a referendum in which voters would decide in favour of or against the proposed constitutional amendment. ... Full story

STOCKHOLM (IPS) - As the world faces new threats of water scarcity, triggered by phenomena like global warming and bioenergy demands, Singapore and Iraq have been singled out as two political extremes in water management.

Singapore, the tiny city-state of 4.5 million people, has been touted as a phenomenal success story despite the absence of any natural resources. Iraq has been dismissed as an abject failure, despite its access to two major rivers within its borders.

Singapore's widely-acknowledged achievement in water management earned the South-east Asian nation the Stockholm Industry Water Award at an international water conference which concluded here Friday.

"We have ensured that our water supply is sustainable for the next 100 years, or more," says Khoo Teng Chye, chief executive of Singapore's national water agency. ... Full story

An indispensable part of the village, tanks are supposed to fulfil four functions - water conservation, soil conservation, flood control and protection of ecology in the surrounding area. But over the years, many tank systems have lost their utility primarily due to lack of maintenance and management.

For afforestation programmes to be successful, surface water must be conserved. This can best be accomplished by increasing the water capacity of existing storage systems and building new systems. The cheapest and easiest method of creating new water storage systems is to construct small-scale ponds and lakes.

Human beings, all life forms, cannot sustain themselves without water. On our planet 97.4 percent of the water is salt water, while a mere 2.5 percent is fresh water. Of the 2.5 percent fresh water, 70 percent has been locked up in ice sheets and glaciers in the Antarctic, Greenland and in mountain ranges in various countries. Less than 30 percent is stored as groundwater in aquifers. A fraction of the freshwater sources are available in rivers and lakes, with other storage sources being the soil, plants and atmosphere. Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar predicted that water scarcity would be the biggest problem facing the earth’s population in the very near future..........Read more

Coca Cola was the leading sponsor of the "World Water Forum" in Mexico this year. But Coke is not alone in the devastation it inflicts in India. Meet the Real Thing. Central and state governments in this country are privatising water. Coke is just one of the beneficiaries. Oddly, those selling out India's water almost never use the word 'privatisation'. They know how discredited that is. So the buzzword is 'efficiency'. Or 'public-private partnerships'. The real questions are never raised. Should anyone own water? How must it be shared? Who gets to decide? Is water a commodity to profiteer in or is it a human right? Is it more than a 'human' right? Countless other species also need it to survive. - P. Sainath

Answer : -- Well irrigation causes the level of the water table to go down until the subterranean flow of water eventually dries up. Shortages of water due to well irrigation are not easily perceptible.

The negative effects of well irrigation include the following:

(1) All neighbouring shallow wells dry up creating the problem of the lack of drinking water.

(2) Trees, orchards and large plants don't get sufficient water so they may wither and die. Green country-side will become a desert after 30 to 45 years of intensive well irrigation.

(3) In some deep tube wells elements or minerals which are harmful to the soil get mixed with the water, causing salinity, for example. As a result the land becomes unfit for cultivation and eventually becomes infertile.

(4) When the flow of well-water stops, irrigation tanks supplied by these wells also dry up.

Thus, well irrigation should be used only as a temporary measure because of the devastating effects it can have on the surrounding environment. Alternative methods of irrigation are river irrigation, irrigation from reservoirs, shift irrigation and lift irrigation. [From 'QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS - 3', Prout in a Nutshell - Part 14, By Shrii P. R. Sarkar]

The two Opium Wars between China and Britain in the mid 1800's powers effectively ended Chinese sovereignty and began its slide into subservience to Western and then Japanese powers. One of the instruments used to undermine Chinese sovereignty was the addictive drug opium. Using Murphey’s East Asia: A New History as the starting point, this paper will analyze the nature and extent of the opium trade with a view to assessing final responsibility for it and thus make the relation between commerce, colonization, and drug use more accessible.

Libya is a relatively unknown country to the world. The US has branded it as 'terrorist.' But, leader Col. Muammad Qadhafi has created something wonderful. It is the Great Man-Made River, which brings 200 million cubic feet of water each day from underneath the southern desert sands to the northern regions where Libyan people reside. More than water, it brings Libya the potential for economic independence, so they will no longer be subjected to cruel economic sanctions and food embargoes. With water, they can develop their own economy and gain glorious self-sufficiency! Please Click here to read the complete article, Eighth Wonder of the World, by Garda Ghista