By Garda Ghista
World Prout Assembly
March 2005

I. Introduction - The Big Picture

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.

Agriculture is the highest water user, with 69 percent of global water supplies going to support crops, 21 percent for industrial purposes and 10 percent for residential use.

To solve present water shortage problems, hydrologic engineers are inventing mega solutions in the form of mega projects, because the problems are also mega-size. For example, the Yellow River in China, the Colorado and Rio Grande Rivers shared by the United State and Mexico, the Indus River in Pakistan and the Nile River running through Eastern Africa have all run dry in recent years for periods of time. Farmers are pumping out 160 million acre-feet of water per year from underground water sources than is being replenished by rains and rivers. As a result, underground water tables are crashing. According to the World Bank, future water scarcity will cut world food production by 350 million tons a year, with disastrous human consequences.

More than one billion people around the world have no access to clean, safe drinking water. Delegates at the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg in 2002 committed themselves to halving that figure by 2015. They also promised to provide modern sanitation to more than a billion of the world's people who presently have nothing. It means that in addition to providing drinking water, countries will also need to provide water for flushing toilets and emptying sewer pipes. Countries already reaching crisis mode, such as China, India, Pakistan and Egypt, are already working frantically to find solutions. Invariably, the hydrological consultants of these countries turn to mega solutions as the only solutions. But there are other scientists and geologists who maintain that big and centralized is not the solution to the growing water crisis. For one thing, the already planned mega solutions will surely lead to water wars between countries. The Danube, Rhine, Congo, Nile, Niger and Zambezi Rivers all run each through nine or more countries. Most of these countries have not signed treaties governing distribution of those river waters. Already extreme tensions over water distribution exist between India and Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, and between Israel, Syria and Turkey. In addition to the distribution issue, the unforeseen rapid global warming is causing changed rainfall patterns, glacial melting way beyond the expectations of even climatologists, which is causing droughts and floods that only further aggravate tensions between countries.

Peter Gleick, of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development Environment and Security in Oakland, California, believes that mega solutions are not the answer to water shortage. While agreeing that the mega-water projects have provided water to millions of people and thousands of acres of agricultural land, he says they have simultaneously reaped huge social, economic and environmental costs. Invariably huge mega water projects involve the displacement, impoverishment and neo-refugee status of tens of thousands to millions of human beings. Those people lose not only their homes and communities; they lose their jobs, which often were related to the water on whose riparian shores they lived. They lose fisheries, flood irrigation, precious silt, and invaluable ecological services that rivers bestow in silence on their floodplains.

Re-plumbing major rivers brings on a whole new set of environmental problems. Large dams built over the past century have caused a huge decline in freshwater fish. The transfer of water from one river basin to another is causing ecological destabilization, via shifting predator species and diseases from one area to another. The Aral Sea is a case in point, as Russian engineers directed the flow of two major rivers away from the Sea and onto a vast landscape of agricultural fields. The result today is that the Aral Sea is now a dried up, salt-encrusted basin amidst a toxic jungle.

According to Gleick, what we need now is a "soft path" to either complement or replace mega water projects. Lower-cost and localized community-scale systems along with efficient engineering and putting a premium on biodiversity and ecosystems must be an integral part of future water projects. The water crisis, says Gleick, is not about water shortage. It is about water management and water distribution. Economically speaking, it is not a supply-side problem. Rather, it is a demand-side problem, with the bottom line being that present water management is perhaps the worst in the earth's history, which means there is nearly unlimited scope for improvement. We use water in many ways. Rivers and canals provide routes for transport of goods. Falling water provides power for residential and commercial purposes. Desalination, recycling and reutilization of wastewater, and rainwater harvesting are additional ways for water use. Without water, we cannot survive. Water is the catalyst for all civilizations since the beginning of time. Hence, with the present shortages and rapid depletion of existing sources, it can be considered the greatest crisis affecting our planet.

II. The Issues

Availability of Water

In 1995, then World Bank vice president Ismail Serageldin said , "If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water." His words are coming true, as countries like China, India, Israel, Bolivia, Canada, Mexico, Ghana and even the United States report severe water shortages. When studying the availability of water, one has to take into account not just its present quantity but the population requiring that water. One also has to determine whether the water is fit for human consumption or whether it has been contaminated by arsenic, depleted uranium or other minerals and man-made chemicals. Furthermore, by modestly or radically changing our original ecosystem, including the water systems, we risk not only the extinction of biodiversity but we threaten our own survival. Looking upon water as a commodity to be used for profit has had disastrous consequences all over the globe. The correct approach must be to utilize water within its natural habitat, and to retain all biodiversity surrounding that water, as it developed there for a reason. We need to understand how, for example, mangroves that once grew in thick forests along the Bay of Bengal were removed to set up shrimp fisheries for the profit of a few. We need to understand the ramifications of the removal of wetlands along the coast of New Orleans for commercial development. Both the wetlands and the mangrove forests served as a natural protection from hurricanes and cyclones in both the Bay of Bengal and the Gulf Coast. Along the coast of Tamil Nadu during the tsunami, certain portions along the coast were covered with mangrove trees. The villages behind those forests suffered no loss of life because the mangroves caught and held the brunt of the tidal wave.

Over one billion people lack access to safe water and over two billion in the world live without proper sanitation. Water-related diseases cause five million deaths annually. Water is the key to life. Human beings cannot survive without water. Without easy availability of water, people are deprived of the chance to maintain good hygiene habits. In addition, health problems due to unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation abound.

Conflicts in the world - wars between nations - are destroying vital and scarce water supplies. In both Iraq and Afghanistan the river waters have been contaminated with depleted uranium, and the previously extant sewer system has been destroyed by bombs. Countries like Angola and Democratic Republic of Congo also bear testimony to how precious water resources are destroyed by war. In desert areas such as the Middle Eastern countries, it is easy to envision that future wars will be fought only over highly scarce water resources.

Resolutions Regarding Water

At the Millennium Summit, the Development Goals agreed upon by the United Nations General Assembly included the proposal to "halve, by the year 2015, the proportion of people who are unable to reach or to afford safe drinking water." The Development Goals were extended at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002. Then in March 2003 the Third World Water Forum took place in Japan, where commitments were made to increase the minimum requirements of water both for health, sanitation and food production. Engineering consultants advised the delegates that an investment of more than $200 billion was required to finance the huge water infrastructures required in the near future - required to provide all people with water. But according to Peter Gleick, this is not true, because the figure of $200 billion is based on the assumption that mega water projects and re-plumbing of entire countries are the only viable solutions to the water crisis.

Water and Gender

Millions of women in developing countries spend several hours a day walking long distances to fetch a few buckets of water - for drinking, bathing and cleaning, to water their vegetables and give to their livestock. It is a great injustice that women are condemned to struggle for something as basic as water, when they could be utilizing those hours to develop themselves intellectually. It is logical to think that in the ideal scenario, women, who have the most at stake without water and who stand the most to benefit in having water piped to their homes, should be an integrated part of the management and maintenance of water resources.

Another major problem is refugees - migrating populations looking for new homes - and water. On reaching a new locality, these homeless people are simply not included in the local water systems.

Re-plumbing Countries

As of 1998 there were 47,655 large dams and 800,000 smaller dams worldwide. A large dam is defined as having a height of more than 15 meters and holding more than three million cubic meters of water in its reservoir. While dams originated around 5,000 years ago, most of today's dams were built in the 1960s and 1980s. In 1999 about 300 dams over 60 meters in height were under construction. According to hydrological experts, many more dams will be required to meet burgeoning populations. Here we need to examine the ecological side effects of dam building, along with the use of water in different areas, and whether water is used in a frugal, efficient manner, which could lead to supplies lasting for decades into the future instead of the current crisis facing the world.

According to Fred Pearce, the real danger in dams is that (1) they trigger earthquakes due to the weight of water in their reservoirs; it creates small geological shifts along fault lines in the vicinity of the dam. An example is the Koyna Dam near Mumbai, India. When its reservoir was first filled, the action caused an earthquake measuring 6.3, which broke the dam and killed 177 people. Another example is the Machu Dam in Gujarat, India. The dam collapsed during an earthquake and drowned 2,000 people in the adjacent town of Morvi. (2) some dams are constructed directly on fault lines or adjacent to them. The Tehri Dam in India is an example.

Climate Change

Water resources are a direct result of climate, which creates the hydrological cycle. Climate change is a natural, ongoing process. If the climate changes in an unnatural way, due to external forces such as, for example, an increase of carbon dioxide or methane gas in the atmosphere, it can have moderate to severe repercussions on our water supplies. Presently we are seeing that due to carbon dioxide emissions, the atmospheric temperatures surrounding the earth are increasing. The amount of increase is minimal. However, just a few degrees' increase can lead to disastrous climatic consequences. These resulting climatic changes will lead to radical changes in our water supplies. Atmospheric scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that the global warming is expected to increase between 1990 and 2100 by from 1.4'C to 5.8'C. This projection is without precedent in the last 10,000 years. The rise in ocean level during this period is projected at from 0.09 to 0.88 meters. The 2003 UNESCO Report on Natural Water Systems explains that this will lead to moderate to severe changes in the global hydrological cycle. In fact, the warming of the earth's atmosphere is occurring far more rapidly than was predicted, forcing scientists to go back to the drawing table to revise their calculations. Changes in the precipitation, distribution, evapotranspiration are already significant. Floods, droughts, cyclones and hurricanes are occurring with near unprecedented frequency and intensity, which is affecting both surface and ground water supplies. An example would be the African Sahel. During the 1950s and 1960s the decrease in precipitation over this region was 50 percent. During the 1970s and 1980s the decrease in precipitation was another 25 percent. With even a rise in sea level of a few inches, the freshwater and salt water will mix and the brackish water will move inland, thus having major impacts on coastal areas. The Bay of Bengal as well as the Gulf area along New Orleans already exhibits this problem. In the Bay of Bengal, mangrove trees that previously protected the land from the violent onslaughts of hurricanes and cyclones were removed to make way for shrimp fisheries along the coast. Along New Orleans the natural wetlands were removed to make way for commercial development, leaving the city completely open to the whims of inundating ocean waters. Climate has a major effect on ecological systems which are entirely interwoven with precious fresh water supplies.

Most of the earth's fresh water resources are stored in ice caps, ice sheets and glaciers. Up until recently, 90 percent of fresh water was contained in frozen form on the earth's surface. Most available fresh water drains steadily from glaciers in North and South America, Europe and Asia and flows downward to sustain river flows below. In addition, underground ice in the form of permafrost covers northern Europe and Asia, northern Canada and Antarctica. In the past this permafrost ranged from 400 to 650 meters. Recent reports, however, indicate that all these areas are melting, and in the process are releasing huge volumes of methane gas into the atmosphere.

According to Lord May, former chief scientific advisor to the British Government, mounting evidence indicates global warming to be the single biggest threat to the world, and particularly to developing countries. Latest studies indicate that the rise in greenhouse gases is directly responsible for increasingly severe drought conditions and potential widespread famine in the eastern African countries. Lord May further cited research by James Verdin of the US Geological Survey that shows the steady decrease of rainfall in Ethiopia and adjacent countries since 1996, which corresponds to an increase in surface-water temperatures in the southern Indian Ocean for the same time period. The reduced rainfall is causing reduction in crops and hence food supply. The greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere are rising

Pollution of Water

The quality of water depends upon many factors, including geology, climate, topography and use of the land, as well as, for example, the duration of time that the water has been stored. Acid rain is a factor in water quality. Contamination of ground water is also a problem in some areas. Contamination can originate from leaks in storage tanks, from mine tailings or accidental spills. In the case of Iraq, ground water is contaminated with depleted uranium dust from American bombs. It will take centuries for that contaminated water to be cleansed. Two natural contaminants of ground water are fluoride and arsenic. Arsenic occurs naturally in the earth?s crust at a certain depth under the ground. In Bangladesh it occurs at about 300 feet below the ground. The tube wells in Bangladesh which have been built to that depth are absorbing the arsenic, with the result that the well water is contaminated. The consequence of drinking arsenic-contaminated water is cancer of the skin, lungs, bladder and kidney. The effects of the poison begin with thickening and pigmentation changes in the skin. It takes approximately ten years for the cancer to fully develop and life to be terminated as a result of arsenic-contaminated well water. The arsenic contamination in the wells of Bangladesh is considered as "the largest mass 'poisoning' in history," and will affect up to 77 million of the country's 133 million inhabitants.

Other pollutants of water are man-made. Domestic sewage, municipal waste and agro- and other industrial waste/by-products are the main pollutants of ground water. These chemicals are presently discharged into rivers, lakes and aquifers. Faecal matter, which is sometimes infected with various pathogens, and comprises one of the wastes discharged into rivers and lakes, causes higher rates of disease and mortality in the populations using the water.

Another problem of organic material discharged into the fresh water bodies is their high amounts of nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus. These two elements when in overabundance cause eutrophication of lakes and reservoirs, which in turn leads to abnormal plant growth and depleted oxygen. Nitrogen is also a common ingredient in agricultural fertilizer, which has probably led to nitrate concentrations exceeding WHO guidelines of 10 milligrams per liter.

Residue from pesticides, waste dumps, mine drainage, and industrial solvents along with heavy metal concentrations have all led to severe contamination of ground and surface water. Problems of contaminated water are particularly acute in Asia, Africa and South America, but with the growing privatization of water, this is extending to Europe and North America.

Corporatization of Water

In country after country, water is changing from being a fundamental human right to a mere commodity. Vandana Shiva tells us that the war in Iraq was not waged only for oil. It was also waged over water. She describes the American corporate mentality as being, if the US corporations cannot get what they want through the WTO, they will get it through open invasion and war. But, get profit they must. Shiva describes the heroic Bolivians of Cochabamba, where water is increasingly scarce. The World Bank in 1999 recommended privatizing the city's water supply, and the Drinking Water and Sanitation Law, which allowed for water privatization, was passed in October 1999. Almost immediately afterwards the residential monthly water bills shot up to more than $20 a month - in a place where people earn less than $100 a month. Within two months the people formed "La Coordniara' de Defense del Aqua y de la Vida" - The Coalition in Defense of Water and Life. The coalition shut down the city for four days via mass mobilization. Millions of Bolivians marched on the streets of Cochambamba and halted all transportation services. In February 2000 La Coordinara organized a peaceful march to demand the repeal of the Drinking Water and Sanitation Law, which allowed privatization. The Coalition proclaimed that water is a fundamental human right and not something to be used for profits. Their demands were violently suppressed. People were arrested, some were killed, and the media was censored. But, in April, the people won the war. Bechtel Company left Bolivia. The government was compelled to revoke the privatization law, and the water company was handed over to the people to manage. As they tried to own the wells of Bolivia, it is sure that Bechtel will likewise work to "own" the ancient Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Corporatization of water resources is growing. In the United States more and more municipalities are faced with growing maintenance and budgetary problems. Town mayors now work hand in hand with multinational corporations. The formerly public water industry now calls upon these corporations to solve their water problems, which to remedy will cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

Water privatization, also referred to as "public-private partnerships," emerged in the United States in the 1970s when dirty leaks and foul odors drove the city of Burlingame, California to outsource the management of its waste water to a corporation now called Veolia Water - a spin-off of the French corporation Vivendi. It is only recently, since the onset of the 21st century, that the trend has gone global, with five percent of all water utilities now privatized. According the Environmental Protection Agency, to maintain and upgrade drinking water infrastructures will cost $280 billion over the next twenty years, while repair and expansion of wastewater systems will run as much as $450 billion. The National Association of Water Companies in the U.S. is pushing for federal legislation that will make it easier to construct so-called public-private sector partnerships. The U.S. Conference of Mayors is partnering with NAWS to advocate fewer restrictions on water privatization.

Gleick points out in his research that privatization of water leads to great risks because, while local public water utilities are "a natural monopoly," private companies uncontrolled by government regulations stand to exploit the people without mercy in the name of the bottom line. Sara Grusky of Public Citizen's Water for All campaign says it is completely wrong for something as basic as water to be in the hands of private companies. Today we see corporations like Vivendi, RWE and Suez swallowing up the smaller, perhaps local water companies. As Gleick points out, when local water is owned and managed by companies on another continent, then money goes out of the local community and across the ocean. Profits do not remain to benefit and build the local communities. The great distance between owner and clients make it also extremely easy for water owners to raise rates to their heart's content. They are not involved or concerned with the common people on another continent.

According to Gleick, water should remain in the hands of the public. One solution, he says, would be for the federal government to set up a sustainable and comprehensive water trust fund that can be used to assist local public water utilities during times of difficulty. Another solution proposed would be to organize "public-public partnerships," which would include government-led reconstruction of local water systems, but such that the public continues to maintain complete control over their water. Public Citizen has reported that San Diego, California and Phoenix, Arizona have saved millions of dollars of public money by improving their water utilities systems through their own internal reforms. According to Jack Bellanger of the Minnesota Water Alliance, people need to first understand that availability of clean water is both a human right and a human responsibility, which will then lead to people developing local, sustainable water systems. As Sara Grusky logically explains, if the local community controls the water, it means that the local people know the people who work in the water company, and vice versa. This will automatically ensure a far greater level of fairness, equity and justice.

III. Select Nations

China

China has a booming economy. But right alongside that booming economy, the country contains 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world. The most serious aspect of this pollution is water pollution. The problems are water pollution, water scarcity, and at times severe water flooding. If these problems are not solved, the water issues will begin to curb China?s economic growth as well as food production for its burgeoning population.

Polluted water in Songhua River reaches Harbin, the capital of northeastern Heilongjiang province November 24, 2005. [

While 44 percent of the population lives in northern China and 48 percent of agricultural land is also in the north, only 14 percent of China's water is in the northern provinces. The Yellow River, once one of China's largest rivers, has been so abused due to poor diversion and irrigation planning that presently for two-thirds of the year its waters do not even reach the ocean. South of Beijing farmers are suffering as they see precious water of the Juma River diverted to the city.

Pollution is caused by factories that have mushroomed along the river banks without accompanying water treatment plants, which leads to 80 percent of factory wastewater returning to the rivers untreated. As a result China has the highest emission of organic water pollutants globally. Water quality is poor and in some areas pure poison.

Chinese authorities have determined the solution to be a massive diversion of water from the Yangzte River in the south to the Yellow River in the north. The Yangtze River originates in the Tibetan Plateau and, fed by snow and ice, moves on down through the mountains and finally empties into the South China Sea near Shanghai. It is the largest river in China and third largest in the world. It extends 3,900 miles in length while its width ranges from eight to more than 1,000 meters during flood season. The Yangtze differs from the Nile and the Amazon because of the far greater populations living on its banks. About 350 million people live near the Yangtze and its tributaries. The river contains unparalleled beauty as it wends its way through mountains and then through steep gorges rising as high as 3,000 feet. But, what happens to the Yangtze affects 350 million people.

The plan is to bring water from the Danjiangkou Reservoir, a huge man-made lake 600 miles to the south next to the Yangtze River. The reason? The Yellow River, which serves the people of the north, including Beijing, is getting exhausted. In addition, the underground water of the north has been all but pumped dry. Hence there is no visible alternative but to bring water from the south. The plan is to have Yangtze water flowing into Beijing in time for the Olympic Games scheduled to take place there in 2008. When completed, the canal will be 200 feet wide, and be the length of France. It will carry ten million acre-feet of water annually from southern China up to Beijing. To achieve this engineering wonder, the Danjiangkou Reservoir will need to be raised to a total height of 550 feet, which will cause the displacement of a quarter million people presently living along its shores. Here begins the human cost of the project. Mega water projects invariably seem to have mega human costs hand in hand with the published mega economic costs of construction. Bringing the water north from the Yangtze River is only one part of a three-stage plan. The second stage will be to extract water from the mouth of the Yangtze River and pour it into the ancient, 1,500-year-old Grand Canal, built in another era for the purpose of transporting rice from southern to northern China. The plan is to clean out the canal and bring more of the Yangtze River water, taking it underneath the Yellow River and onto the North China Plain, to bring relief to the ten million populated city of Tianjin, presently starving for water. The third plan is to collect the headwaters of the Yangtze River behind a 1,000-foot-high dam to be built among the melting Tibetan glaciers. The caught water will then be transported through a 70-mile tunnel to eventually merge into the Yellow River, so as to again provide more total water to the water-parched northern area of China. According to China's hydrologic engineers, this mammoth plan must be done. The north is turning into rapidly into desert. It has already reached a state of water crisis. The crisis is exacerbated by the fact that the water table under Beijing, for example, has fallen 200 feet in the last 40 years. In some areas, 90 percent of the underground water is simply gone. At present, 90 percent of the Yangtze River water flows directly into the ocean. Chinese engineers believe the water must be retrieved and harnessed to serve the human population and end the present crisis, which will soon become far more serious than any possible oil shortage in China.

The massive water diversion project will take several years to complete. While it may have positive results, the negative results are already known: displacement of hundreds of thousands of already impoverished people and loss of biodiversity, of ecological equipoise. At present all efforts are focused on this gigantic project of water diversion to the north via dams, reservoirs, tunnels, canals and aqueducts. However, the equally severe problems of water pollution and water wastage have not yet been emphasized by the present administration. If these two issues are not solved in tandem with massive water diversion, the actual results of the diversion will be far lower than present expectations.

If water waste in agriculture, in the form of leakages and evaporation in irrigation systems, were curbed, it could represent huge water savings, water conservation. Presently one hectare of farmland uses 20,000-30,000 cubic meters of water. Changing to drip irrigation, for example, could reduce this amount by two-thirds.

Yellow River

B. India

India's water deficit - the difference between demand and availability of water - is the greatest of any country in the world, and three-four times greater than China's deficit. In the mid 1990s India's water deficit was calculated to be about 100 billion cubic meters annually. Groundwater depletion is causing a drop in aquifers of three to ten feet each year, causing the cost of pumping to become prohibitive. The scores of dams that have been built serve to benefit the well-to-do larger landholders by providing valuable electricity for large-scale irrigation of croplands, while the poor people remain impoverished. When large dams are constructed, scores of thousands of villagers, 89 percent of whom are tribals, are displaced and rarely relocated. If relocated, they live on subsistence crops like millet, barley and corn. With large dams providing the capacity for bigger, greater irrigation, the farmers start cash crops like sugarcane and wheat. Sugarcane requires huge amounts of water. Poor farmers cannot afford the pesticides and fertilizers required to grow cash crops, and end up selling their small holdings to larger landlords, themselves becoming beggars or day laborers.

Weeping for Water

Part of the Indian problem is that "regular" Hindus think the tribal people are close to subhuman. Tribals use the tried and tested method of slash-and-burn agriculture, which means using certain plots for several years until the land becomes fallow, and then moving on to new forestland. It was the indigenous form of crop rotation, and it worked. However, Western people, starting with the British and ending with the Americans, showed no respect for indigenous farming methods and insist on implementing growth of cash crops with accompanying horrendous water wastage enabled only through large dam construction.

A downstream effect of large dams has been the destruction of Narmada's hilsa fishery. It was the largest on the west coast of India. The large dam will wipe it out.

Groundwater in India supplies about 80 percent of the domestic water supply in the rural areas. In the past 30 years approximately 3 million hand-pump boreholes have been built. In 2003 244 km3/year of water was being pumped for irrigation purposes from 15-17 million motorized dugwells and tubewells. Nearly 70 percent of Indian agricultural production is being sustained by groundwater. While groundwater recharge estimates vary greatly, it would be safe to say that present recharging of groundwater supplies is not keeping up with removal and use.

Indian monsoons are characterized by huge heavy drops of water falling suddenly and torrentially, drenching everything in their wake. Perhaps we can call it the most exciting rainfall in the world. After about one hundred hours of rain spread over an equal number of days, the Indian monsoon moves onward and upward, but not before its rains have swollen rivers, filled reservoirs, and turned parched land a lush green. In the north, the monsoon rains combine with the melting glacier water to feed the great Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers, which sustain life for millions. When the monsoon rains arrive, millions of Indians celebrate as they watch their ponds and storage tanks fill and well water levels rise. Human beings cannot live for longer than five-seven days without water. Hence, the monsoon rains are the great gift to the people. Monsoon rains are part of that endless water cycle that has taken place on the earth since the beginning of geological time. Clouds form over the Indian Ocean, and then the moisture is converted into rain drops which fall on the ground. There the water gets enmeshed in plants or is consumed by humans and animals. It may simply run into the rivers and oceans. Or it may merge into frozen ice caps and Himalayan glaciers. Still more water vanishes deep into the ground to form part of ancient aquifers holding that most precious jewel for millions of years. This water cycle is a wondrous turning of the endless wheel of creation.

Monsoon rains invade people's lives.

On June 25, 2005 the World Bank released yet another draft report on "India's Water Economy: Bracing for a Turbulent Future." As Vandana Shiva points out, the World Bank, working on behalf of the wealthiest men in the world, reduces water to an "economy" and a "market economy." The World Bank, one of the most prominent and influential institutions in the world today, is determining the future attitudes towards and methods of global water utilization. As Shiva writes in her article, "India's Water Future," the World Bank cannot conceive of terms such as "water ecology," "water culture," or "water democracy." In fact, she writes, dismantling the traditional structures of water democracy, "the public good, ecological sustainability, protection of the water commons and defense of community rights is the prime object of the World Bank approach." The evidence says that water privatization as advocated by the World Bank has failed in country after country. What will work, says Shiva, is putting water back into the hands of the people to be cooperatively, collectively managed. It is the right of the people to harness and manage their own water resources. Community-based approaches to water harvesting and distribution invariably succeed. Privatization makes a handful of people wealthy but destroys the lives of the common people. It does not work for the public good, and it is in direct opposition to community rights. The World Bank, as indicated in its most recent report, wants to destroy the extant community-based water systems which presently flourish across India and replace them with water controlled by private corporations. It will compel the common people to become completely dependent on those corporations for their survival. The free market grows while the common people die for want of a cup of water. It never occurs to World Bank members comprising some of the wealthiest men on our planet, that water is a fundamental inalienable right of the people. This is part of what comprises international law. Shiva says that by ignoring the fact that water is a finite resource and stating that water access and distribution be driven by (insatiable) demand markets, the World Bank is actively deepening the water crisis, not only in India but globally. In addition, the Bank in its reports misleads the public by quoting fraudulent figures such as per capita water storage to push its personal agenda for large dams which redirect rivers flowing in rural areas to urban and industrial areas. The figures are both fudged and completely wrong. They fail to take into account the millions of community-based water storage tanks and ponds. Combined, they store more water than the large dams, and they serve the local people with reservations or restrictions based on ability to pay. Large dams, says Shiva, have already displaced 40 million people in the past 50 years. If dams are constructed at five times the rate of the past half century, it means that 200 million, or one fifth of India's population will be displaced. We can be sure that those displaced are the poor, half-naked, starving, downtrodden members of society. The World Bank is directly to blame for India's water crisis, and they continue to keep water supplies in a crisis stage. Their notions of privatization will destroy the beautiful water culture of the Jai Mandirs to be found in thousands of villages across the length and breadth of the land. It will destroy India's bountiful, rich ecology, and leave local communities disenfranchised and facing new, stark levels of impoverishment. Our work today is to fight the onslaught of water privatization and corporatization. It is to defend the rights of every human being to free water as per his minimum requirements. It is to base the management of India's water not on the vision of the World Bank but on the glorious vision of the common people.

Large dam building in India and elsewhere is at the core of conflicts, as it involves water scarcity, environmental destruction, loss of biodiversity, social justice / injustice and displacement generally of millions of indigenous peoples. It further highlights the growing gap between rich and poor, as the rich are invariably unaffected by large dams and generally stand to profit, while the poor have their lives affected and often bodies displaced. The World Bank in giving maximum loans to countries for building large dams was the biggest culprit as they ignored all the collateral damage of dams while publicly claiming to work for the poor people. By the mid 1990s so many of their dam projects had turned into disasters that a group called International Rivers Network of Berkeley, California demanded the creation of an independent commission to assess the viability of World Bank dam projects. Thus the World Commission on Dams was born in 1997 , comprising of an independent body of twelve commissioners, whose job was to assess the positive and negative impacts of proposed World Bank dam projects, with the long-term goal being to establish international criteria and guidelines for building and managing dams while simultaneously looking out for the welfare of indigenous peoples and local biodiversity.


Medha Patkar has spent the last 20 years fighting large dam construction in India.

In 1997 the World Commission on Dams, whose commissioners included the activist Medha Patkar, submitted their final report entitled Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision-Making. The report on dams was indeed damning. It said large dams involved huge delays and hence huge cost overruns. Invariably they did not produce the expected water volume, and were not financially profitable. The environmental costs were beyond vast, were in fact irreparable, including loss of biodiversity and destruction of entire ecosystems. Dams in tropical locations emit substantial greenhouse gases from rotting plants in shallow reservoirs. Worst has been the social impact of large dams as they displace thousands to millions of people, with promises of so-called relocation invariably broken by the governments involved. The Commission report also stipulated 26 guidelines to follow related to decision-making on the building of prospective dams, one of which is the "free, prior and informed consent" of the indigenous peoples who stand to suffer displacement in the wake of those dams. Notably, while the World Bank created the World Commission on Dams, once the Report was submitted, the World Bank turned its back on its own creation, minimalized the Report's findings and ignored its recommendations. Due to its own vested interests (profit for its corporate friends), the Bank has ignored the Report. However, the Report is becoming a standard reference document for more and more countries, including so far South Africa, Vietnam, Thailand and Nepal. As Jacques Leslie says, "the report hovers over dam projects as an admonition to dam builders in the name of human decency and environmental sanity." The World Commission on Dams (WCD) Report was comprehensive and thorough. The commissioners carried out in-depth studies of eight large dams on five continents and briefer reviews of 125 more large dams in 56 countries. They assessed social, environmental, economic and financial issues. In addition the Commission studied possible alternatives to large dams based on hundreds of submissions by concerned individuals and organizations. The Commission determined that the costs of large dams far outweigh the gains, based upon the following facts:

1. Large dams have forced 40-80 million people from their homes and lands, leading to severe economic hardship and community dispersal and collapse. Indigenous peoples have suffered maximally. People living downstream suffer from water-borne diseases.

2. Large dams cause vast and irreparable ecological damage, including the extinction of fish and the loss of huge tracts of forestland, farmland and wetlands.

3. Whatever benefits came from large dams have gone to the wealthy members of society, while the poor people got little to no benefit and rather bear the costs.

In view of the above findings, the WCD made the following recommendations:

1. Dams should not be constructed without the prior approval of the affected people, particularly not without the prior approval of indigenous and tribal peoples.

2. The people to be affected must be involved in every step of decision-making.

3. Before building any new large dams, it should be assessed by the local people along with professionals whether any alternative steps can be taken to avoid construction of a large dam.

4. Reviews of existing dams should be undertaken at regular intervals to determine their safety and possible termination of use.

5. Steps must be undertaken immediately to provide reparations, financial and otherwise, to peoples displaced and/or suffering from the earlier construction of large dams.

6. Steps must be undertaken immediately to restore surrounding ecosystems to their previous status.

When Jacques Leslie traveled to Domkhedi, headquarters of Andolan, the anti-dam movement in India headed by Medha Patkar, the locals frowned on seeing his bottle of water. Bottled water, they told him, is an instrument of globalization. Year after year, when the monsoon rains cause reservoir waters to rise, Medha Patkar, now 52 years old, uses the chance to attempt drowning for the cause - to stop construction of large dams. Invariably, the police intervene, to save themselves the embarrassment of her death. People say Medha is the embodiment of morality. She has spent her entire life fighting the construction of large dams, by organizing marches, sit-ins, occupations, office seizures, and gheraos (surrounding officials, at times for days on end, until they agree to the demands of the Andolan, the movement founded by Medha to block large dam construction. She sets up road and traffic blockades, closes villages to pro-dam officials, repeatedly tries to drown herself in rising reservoir waters, and makes regular declarations to drown unless officials respond with action. In most cases, the result has been ever greater police brutality against her and the tribals who make up her undying supporters.

People protest megadams on Narmada

In India 350 million people - one third of the population - are environmental refugees and live on the margins of society. Large dams have displaced 21-55 million of that 350 million. Consequently, hundreds of human rights groups have taken birth all over India. Medha Patkar, through her intense sacrifice, became the spokeswoman for all. The reward for all groups, including Medha's Andolan, is police beatings, police rapes, and even police killings, even when groups were only requesting food for displaced refugees. According to Medha, the alternative to large dams is to build check dams to run mini-hydroelectric plants near villages to provide the modest electricity needs of villages. For water, villagers should use rooftop water in addition to small check dams. The rallying cries of the Andolan are: "We are all ... one! To whom does the forest and the land belong? It belongs to us!"

The less visible tragedy of large dams is that it not only displaces people physically, it destroys communities, and hence entire social lives of people. Sixty percent of displaced people in India are tribal people. The same villagers who before survived by fishing, are no longer allowed to fish in the dam reservoir, as it is "owned" by a local contractor. Globalization - capitalism - wins the day. As Medha says, the World Bank is nothing but a loan shark, always looking for more ways to squeeze money from the poorest, most helpless people on earth. After eight years of struggle with the World Bank, she said, "I know what it eats and what it drinks." The World Bank is pro-dam and pro privatization. The Andolan, under the relentless guidance of Medha Patkar, has fought a hard battle against the World Bank and shown the world that indigenous peoples and ecology cannot be ignored. So much harm to people and environment cannot be tolerated. Medha spent years walking from one tribal village to another, thus gaining their unbounded love, affection and devotion.

The Tehri Dam, presently in various stages of construction on the headwaters of the Ganges River, above the town of Tehri in the western Himalayas, is an example of a dam being built in a seismic zone and near the spot of a recent earthquake. Engineers intend to drown the entire valley by building the highest dam in Asia. The location of the dam is at the narrowest point of a gorge at the end of the valley. When the dam is completed, the valley will hold 3 million acre-feet of water. South of the Tehri Dam, the people in the Indian capital of New Delhi are desperate for water and face chronic shortages. Other cities like Allahabad and Kanpur are equally desperate for electricity to power their industries. Farmers across northern India are weeping for water for their crops. In early 2005, the first stage of completion occurred, which flooded Tehri town and 23 villages in the valley, causing the displacement of more than 80,000 people. However, greater tragedy lies in store for 300,000 people living downstream in the towns of Hardwar, Devaprayag and Rishikesh, all famous sites of religious pilgrimage for centuries. Neutral seismologists not involved with the Tehri dam project believe that when the dam is completed, it will create a huge risk of earthquake, which can destroy the dam and send millions of acres and a 130-foot wall of water down through the gorge that will bury these three ancient cities. But perhaps the worst aspect of dam building, as reported in the Uttaranchal News in August 2005, is that the 100,000 people already displaced and dispossessed by the dam have not been compensated as promised by the involved authorities. They are homeless and in abject poverty. Neither the Congress Party, the BJP nor local state bureaucrats have bothered to properly care for and rehabilitate the thousands of displaced people. This amounts to a crime against humanity. If thousands of these people die, it amounts to state and corporate genocide.

Tehri Dam under Construction

Continued in Part Two