The water crisis is here!

BY ANTHONY GATHAMBIRI IMC

Water is a commodity that no creature can live without. Biologists tell us that 70% of our body is water. Without it we collapse and die. It is water that supports fish that we enjoy eating; it is water that quenches our thirst; and it is water that we get on a drip when we are rushed to hospital.

The water crisis is becoming an ever greater challenge in Africa. Most of the continent, which knows the scourge of drought only too well already, will increasingly face water shortages. South Africa not exempted.

Some countries have begun experiencing it in urban areas where populations numbers are on the rise. In those areas water is a luxury. The water crisis is here already! Experts warn that within the lifetime of our children, by the middle of this century, wars will be fought over water.

Mother Earth has more than enough fresh water that could support the seven billion people sitting on planet earth. Here in Africa, we have massive water bodies, and yet some children miss classes in order to help their parents fetch this basic commodity.

Unfortunately, water is wasted in many ways. When pipes burst on our roads and the situation goes unreported for hours, huge volumes of water go down the drains while somebody else somewhere is decanting murky water in order to drink it.

We use clean, piped water to irrigate our lawns while others queue for a bottle of water.

To address the problem of wasting water, a modification of lifestyle is necessary, beginning at home. This is a moral issue.

Of course the problem is broader than that. Water pollution is massive; our South African rivers are no longer safe to drink from, or often for fish to live in.

Professor Jesse Mugambi, a Kenyan academic who teaches at Nairobi University, laments: “In my childhood, the water was so clear that you could see the hard rock at the bottom. Fishing for trout was so easy. We enjoyed it. When we used our fishing rods, we could see ourselves catching the fish.”

Today most of our rivers are brown, stinking water, polluted by industrial sludge and sewerage, with polythene bags and plastic rubbish floating on their banks.

The necessary change must begin with us. We must form a generation that doesn’t wash clothes in running streams; that doesn’t throw bottles or chocolate wrappers anywhere, including into the water.

The “green gospel” must penetrate our children, ourselves and our peers to form responsible citizens.

Water consumption is increasing every day while water resources decrease. Water is becoming expensive, and it will become unaffordable to many, even as access to clean water is considered a human right. We all need to get to the businesses of conserving the little water we have.

Approximately 170 million people die each year either because they didn’t have any water to drink or because they drank unclean water. This death toll exceeds that of war and other violent deaths.

Church communities cannot be indifferent to that. It is our mission as Christians to protect our water, to educate people about how to harvest water, to teach people how to use it sparingly and how to conserve it.

It is not enough to drill boreholes to solve the water crisis, but we also need to protect the watersheds through deforestation, lest the boreholes dry up.

Our forefathers treated nature with a very high respect because they knew that God manifested himself in them. Have we forgotten that nature is God’s icon, that we do not have God’s licence to pollute the rivers and the seas?