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The Office of the Anglican Observer at the United Nations Archdeacon Taimalelagi Fagamalama Tuatagaloa-Matalavea The Anglican Observer at the United Nations and The Rev. Canon Jeff Galliher, Ph.D. Program Associate for the Environment and Sustainable Development April, 2004 As the twelfth Commission on Sustainable Development meets in New York, the global scarcity and condition of water and sanitation must be seen with the deepest possible concern. Projections indicate that nearly forty percent of the world's people will suffer from severe water scarcity within a decade. Water has been identified by the United Nations as one of five interrelated focus areas (WERAB) for sustainable development (with energy, health, agriculture, and biodiversity). Improvements in the condition of water and sanitation had a prominent place in the deliberations of the Millennium Summit (2002) and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg (August, 2002) -- the goals being to halve the number of people without safe drinking water and sanitation by 2015. Only a few years later, those WSSD and Millennium Summit goals, according to the World Water Report, are already well beyond reach. It is self-evident that we have entered, headlong, the crisis that we had hoped the implementation of Agenda 21 would help us avoid. Evidence from from the other WEHAB focus areas, in combination with low financial investment in sustainable development projects, points to the same conclusion. If present trends continue, it has been argued, then several future generations will be born before the goals set for 2015 might feasibly be reached -- which amounts to planning for seven generations by default, their inheritance passed on in the form of salvageable remains. Do we not know what an emergency alarm sounds like? The crossroads before us today is not one of choosing hope or pessimism in the face of an overwhelming challenge. Nor does it compromise our strong commitment to the vision and aims of the United Nations. Although much hopeful work is being accomplished in all areas of sustainable development and environmental protection, this cannot balance the death as a fundamental right (even more a "need") is the measure of how much that birthright has already been lost and our ecological and spiritual understanding diminished. The extent to which we believe this fundamental right can be genuinely gained on the basis of water's economic value is the measure of how much our birthright has, in effect, already been given/taken away. Clearly, something is missing in the prevailing model of sustainable development. Along the same lines, the question of the ownership of water, and more broadly, water as "an economic good," has been a contentious subject on the international scene. Private industry has tremendous resources which can help solve the water crisis. However, the solutions we seek must be understood in humanitarian, ecological, spiritual, as well as economic contexts. It is no secret that a large part of the crisis we have entered is a result of the rejection of sustainability, equity, the universality of human rights, and the common good by powerful economic interests who favor competition to decide who will win and lose in wars for dwindling resources. One must wonder if this colonial strategy informed the thinking of the so- called "Brussels group," which included the United States. Britain, Germany, Belgium, Italy, France, and the Netherlands. As reported by the New Scientist and later by Huey Johnson of the Resource Renewal Institute in the UN Chronicle (2002), representatives of the Brussels group met secretly in 1971 to undermine the first Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. And today, we look ahead only a decade to forsee nearly half the world's people without sufficient water! People like Rene Dubos and Barbara Ward -- to name only two of many from the time when the UN first took up the ecological crisis -- knew that we need deeply to rethink our economic values, while recognizing that the present crisis will not be solved simply by directing more finances to specific problem areas, as urgently as they are needed. They also knew that the sacred and the ecological are so bound together in the web of life that their separation in our consciousness is the seed of exploitation and colonial domination, regardless of the outward form it may take. More recently, Thomas Berry, one of the most prophetic voices of our time, described the outcome of this exploitation by saying that we are changing the chemistry of the biosphere. It is simply not enough to believe that this fact will affect our lives sometime in the future. The chemistry of our bodies is changing now with the earth's. And while this happens, we must speak of the need to regulate the water industry and its markets, as if this addresses the real questions. Water is much more than a right or a need. Water is a primordial manifestation of the sacred on earth. The sacred is about survival -- real survival for the whole body of life, which is the reason religious traditions, especially those of indigenous peoples, have valued it so highly. Through the water of baptism, Christians affirm their responsibilities to the whole human community, which, in practice, must include the web of life. Water symbolizes the possibility of rebirth, empowerment, and the hope of a renewed creation. The substance of water itself and the natural design of watersheds express this spiritual meaning though their ecological properties of cleansing and healing. Yet, we continue to destroy watersheds, while poisoning what remains of a well that is running dry. The deteriorating condition of freshwater across the planet threatens the integrity of religious life as a whole and erodes our ability to meet other crises in the present and future. * What does it mean when water is so scarce that our primary symbol of renewal is no longer available? * What does it mean when water is so contaminated, i.e., poisoned, that its primordial capacity to heal has been lost? *What kind of empowerment is proclaimed when the water of baptism must be purchased from those who "own" it? It is critical that NGOs and all parties and participants rethink the priorities and problems in sustainable development strategies concerning water -- as well as energy, food, health, and biodiversity. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights can be strengthened in this regard by the collective voices and actions of all parties. As NGOs representing the world's religions, we must organize ourselves again, at all levels, in the spirit of the World Parliament of Religions and the Assisi Declarations, and take action. There is nothing to lose that hasn't already been lost, or threatens to be, and everything to gain. | News Center | Vincentian Issues 2004-2005 A | Vincentian Issues 2004-2005 B | The Whole World Knew | Anglicans - Water | | Return Home | About Us | What's New | Current Focus | Articles | Great Links | E-mail | |
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