World Water Day 2014

World Water Day 2014: Holistic actions needed

SKT Nasar‏

The UN World Water Day 2014 with the theme ‘Water and Energy’ has been celebrated on 22 March 2014 as a part of International Decade for Action ‘Water for life 2005-2015’. Nations have been talking for long but many of the countries sulk when it comes to fair action. Only piecemeal programmes for patchwork are not enough. The challenges are extraordinary that require holistic actions now.

Cyclic existence of everything is an established principle valid for all aspects from God Particle to Multiverse. These cycles overlap and are intricately interlaced.  Damage or snapping off of the natural chains of cycles causes severe distortions, even disasters. Until functional cycles are invented de novo, the only option left to humanity is to repair the damages to re-establish the snapped chains. So is it with liquid water on madre terra.

Life on earth cannot exist without water. The universal right to life indeed includes the right to liquid water. It is a massive task to provide physically, chemically and biologically clean water to quench the thirst of over seven billion peoples as of now; and demands are growing exponentially. Industries and urbanised landscapes require billions of gallons of clean water per day to ultimately gush out contaminated effluents. Intensive and extensive agriculture, in addition, require enormous amounts of clean water for irrigation. Erratic rainfalls or over-irrigation causes flash flooding that drains out top soil contaminating already silted water bodies. Agrochemicals of modern agriculture are washed out causing environmental pollution. Mammoth drawls of ground water for irrigation and other purposes disseminate polluting compounds such as arsenic otherwise sequestered in deep aquifers. These waters, thrown centrifugally off course their natural cycles, are not reinstated to natural states. This phenomenon sets off water-related disasters.

Distribution of water for all needs from source to destination involves high energy costs. Cleaning of water for consumption by humans, agriculture, livestock, and industry involves additional costs in terms of energy. Unfortunately, the stakeholders, both producers and consumers, of these processes are apathetic to recycling the abused water.

Water is used to produce hydroelectric energy. Large dams for harnessing hydro-power have shown potential for catastrophe of varied intensity. The hydro-energy is used for providing water to all and also for decontamination of water. Fossil, nuclear and renewable energy is consumed in addition to hydroelectricity to meet escalating demands. Nuclear energy has shown the capacity for tragedies. Each nation state should, by intention, laws, programmes and strict execution, make it compulsory for each stakeholder to conserve water, reduce its consumption, and to restore used water to its natural state at well-researched low energy costs. All industries, including bottled water and cold-drink industries should be made to comply.

The principle of ‘Polluter Must Pay’ needs to be modified to ‘Polluters Must Restore and Compensate Damage’. Moist agriculture rather than flooding- or wet-agriculture should become the order of the day. Polluting industry and agriculture must be discouraged. A palpable shift to using renewable forms of energy which is costlier in the present-day economy needs to be made compulsory.

Water and energy have become inseparable. While World Water Day is more or less of an annual ritual, the real challenge is to make each day, 24x7, the water-&-energy day a habit for every inhabitant of planet earth. Global zero-tolerance common-goal policy and action programmes should be: ‘Sustain water; Slash energy’.

S.K.T. Nasar

Former Director (Research)

Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya

(= BC Agricultural University)

West Bengal, INDIA

E-mail: sktnasar (at) hotmail.com