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- Herausgeber: Infinito edizioni
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
The deep link between water and the right to health is one of the themes dealt with in denouncing the urgent social and geopolitical issues inherent in the most essential of human resources. In an era marked by the pandemic, by environmental disasters linked to climate change, by the phenomenon of Earth Overshoot Day, water is "analysed" as an emblem of the planet's natural balance that human beings cannot destroy without annihilating themselves. The denunciation of issues that cannot be postponed, such as the ever less obvious right of access to drinking water, or drought, the cause of conflicts and migratory flows, is accompanied by an analysis of the spiritual, cultural and artistic dimension with which man has looked to the natural element, the source of life par excellence. The cry of the scientists, in fact, is waiting to be re-launched by a powerful leap of ethical awareness. Lest we forget that, as the philosopher-anthropologist Loren Eiseley said, “If there is any magic on this planet, it is contained in the water”.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Fausta Speranza
The Sense of Thirst
Water between geopolitics, rights, art, and spirituality
Table of contents
The greeting and wish of Pope Francis
Preface
Preface
Introduction
Introduction
Part One
In a “liquid” modernity
The civilisations of rivers
It is easy to say H₂O
The water cycle
The water crisis, a global emergency
Plastic islands
The wars for the blue gold
Something new on the Western Front
Clear Water
Water on the stock market
Water and Health: global rights
On the pathway to water
Part Two
Will and creativity
Water and the Sun's Sister
It is time for hydrogen
Water's second life
Pope Francis’ global embrace
Pink universe is green
In the Mediterrean Sea, sources of hope
Environmental crimes
Part Three
From nature to imagination
Religiousness and water
In the Bible
In Judaism
In Christianity
In Islam
In Buddhism
In Hinduism
In Taoism
The memory of water
The thermal baths
Humanae litterae
For a civilisation of water
The visual arts
Music
Water and architecture
The Cinema
Water rising to the sky…
Afterword
Acknowledgements
© Copyright Infinito edizioni, 2023
First edition: April 2021
English Edition: July 2023
Infinito edizioni S.r.l.
Formigine (Modena)
Electronic mail: [email protected]
Website: www.infinitoedizioni.it
Facebook: Infinito edizioni
Instagram: Infinito edizioni
Twitter: @infinitoed
ISBN ISBN9788868617134
Cover: Infinito edizioni
Cover illustration: Lucio Trojano (by courtesy)
Layout and graphics: Infinito edizioni
To uncle Peppe, who recognises the musicality of existence
even at the centre of a vortex
To my Julia, who begins to sail as an adult
in the waters of life
To Love, who gives me a calm harbour for every storm
“There is a millennial deposit of fresh water in my soul”
(Abdelmajid Benjelloun)
The greeting and wish of Pope Francis
Santa Marta, 19 February 2021
Dear Ms Speranza,
Through the gracious intermediary of the Most Rev. Father Bernard Ardura, you have wished to express your sentiments of adherence to my Magisterium as Successor of Peter, by writing a work entitled The Sense of Thirst, which is inspired by the themes of the common home and brotherhood.
I thank you for what you wanted to show me, as well as for your writing, the result of your daily hard work and meticulous collection of topical issues, and I hope that it will encourage respect for and custody of Creation. Cultivating and protecting Creation is an instruction from God given not only at the beginning of history (cf. Gen 2:15), but to each one of us, to make the world grow with responsibility, to transform it so that it may be a habitable place for everyone.
While asking you to persevere in prayer for me and for my service to the Church, I likewise assure you of a prayerful memory for you and your loved ones and gladly I give you the Apostolic Blessing.
Pope Francis
Dear Ms. Fausta SPERANZA
Dicastery for Communication
Vatican Radio
VATICAN CITY
The letter sent by Pope Francis to the Author.
Preface
Rivers of Life
by Vandana Shiva
scientist, ecologist, activist, and writer
I am a daughter of the Ganges and the Himalayas, nourished materially and spiritually by Dev Bhoomi, our sacred land. The mountains, the forests and Mata Ganga have shaped my imagination, my knowledge, my science, my life, my activism.
I have been an ecology activist for four decades, inspired by the Chipko movement that began in the early 1970s in my region of the Garhwal Himalayas in Uttarakhand. Uttarakhand is the source of the sacred Ganges and its tributaries. The Ganges that is mother to us, Mata Ganga, is India's lifeline. The sources of the Ganges have been recognised as sacred places. Materiality and spirituality are not separated in Indian civilisation. And this is the first reason why I highly appreciated a book that moves from the most pressing 'material' issues to the deepest spirituality. Rivers are sacred and are also the ecological foundation of our economy and society. The pilgrimage to four sacred sites, Gangotri, Yamunotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath, the Char Dham, aimed to connect us culturally and spiritually to the sacred sites on Earth, to connect us ecologically to the sources of life, the sources of our rivers.
Every year the glaciers of the Himalayas are losing half a metre of snow. The causes and consequences are not local. The melting of glaciers is a direct impact of industries and fossil fuels, of greenhouse gas emissions. The formation of glacial lakes due to melting snow has doubled in the last seven years. Logging, dam building, and highway construction are carried out by national companies and non-local contractors. In addition to all this, climate change is contributing to the acceleration of disasters in the fragile Himalayas. The Himalayas, the mountain of snow, is the Third Pole that supplies water to half of humanity. Mata Ganga and our everlasting rivers are fed by glaciers and are the lifeline of half of India, creating the fertile plains that have provided us with food for thousands of years. The Himalayan disasters are an existential threat to India, both materially and spiritually. We must listen to the cry of the Himalayas because our wellbeing and survival depend on the Himalayan Ganges.
Today, driven by greed and corruption, we have become ignorant of the culture of the sacred and the ecological fragility of the Himalayas. The sacred sets limits. Ecological fragility sets limits. Justice sets limits. Today these limits are violated because rivers are dammed and diverted for electricity. The pilgrimage to Char Dhams is becoming a rough consumerist mass tourism. This book for which Fausta Speranza has chosen a beautiful title, The Sense of Thirst, is a reminder of these very limits. And the fact that alongside the problems there are solutions and 'sources' of thought and spirit is not only fascinating, but also effective because it reminds us that there are no more excuses. The way to reject greed and corruption and to rediscover the connection with life is there. The Himalayan disasters, including the tragedy of 7 February 2021, are a consequence of ignorance and greed, the greed to extract the last drop of oil and gas from underground, the last kilowatt of energy from the last river, including our sacred mother Ganges and its tributaries, the last penny, the last rupee of nature and workers.
The 2021 disaster took place in the Rishi Ganga Valley, near Reni, where tunnels for the Rishi Ganga project were under construction. The Rishi Ganga joins the Alaknanda, a tributary of the Ganges. Reni is the village from where women like Gaura Devi first warned about the ecological fragility of the Himalayas, forty years ago, after the 1970 Alaknanda disaster, and it was there that the first action of the Chipko movement took place. The flood caused by a large landslide flooded one hundred square kilometres, caused the abandonment of 101 villages, destroyed 604 houses and six bridges, devastated five hundred acres of crops, barns and water mills. 142 animals and 55 people died. According to some reports, 200-500 people lost their lives.
Already in the past, women have immediately linked deforestation to landslides and floods, remarking that the primary products of the forest are not wood and revenue, but soil and water. Intact forests which protect the fragile Himalayan slopes provide more to the economy than when they are cut down as dead wood. For more than a decade, the non-violent direct actions of Chipko activists have prevented logging.
As a result of the 1978 Uttarkashi disaster, the government recognised that the women were right. The amount the government was spending to alleviate floods was much more than the revenue it was getting from timber extraction; so, the government realised that what my sisters in Chipko were saying had scientific basis. The real economy of the Himalayan forests owed everything to the land and the debate on water and the prevention of floods and droughts was central.
In 1981, as a reaction to the Chipko movement, logging was banned over a thousand kilometres in the Garhwal Himalaya. Today, government policy recognises that silviculture in the fragile Himalayas must be conservation silviculture that maximises the ecological services of the forest in protection, not an extractive silviculture. However, five hundred dams are planned in our region on the Ganges system and people talk about blowing up mountains for tunnels for hydropower projects. Most of the people who died or disappeared in the 2021 disaster were workers who were building tunnels for the hydroelectric project on Rishi Ganga near Reni and the Tapovan dam in Dhauliganga.
Private companies make profits. Nature, local communities and workers pay with their lives.
The 2013 Kedarnath disaster caused five thousand deaths and the disappearance of nearly 100,000 people. It should have been an alarm bell that the fragile and sacred Himalayas cannot suffer the heavy ecological footprint of unlimited greed and consumerism.
It has been ignored and here we had another disaster in 2021. Our study of the 2013 Kedarnath disaster revealed that most of the landslides were caused by tunnel explosions for hydroelectric projects. Explosions trigger thousands of landslides. At the first rain, these landslides fill the river bed with debris. There is no space to let water flow. We are literally stealing ecological space to our rivers. And when they have no space to flow, they will overflow, cut the banks and they will cause floods.
Usually, floods come at the end of a heavy monsoon. In 2013, they came with the first rain. The monsoon arrived early, and the rain was much heavier than usual. This is climatic instability. In the meanwhile, the ecological damage caused by poor development has reduced the ability of the mountain ecosystem to cope with heavy rain.
Climate chaos adds to vulnerability. Kedarnath, the 8th century Shiva temple, is located at the source of Mandakini River, a further tributary of the Ganges. Kedarnath's disaster was caused by the breaking of the Kedar Dome glacier, which led to the burst of Charbari, a glacial lake. These are climatic disasters. We must acknowledge that our glaciers are threatened and that melting glaciers will lead to disasters. Disaster preparation is a government duty. However, disaster preparation requires honest and robust ecological science as well as honest and solid participatory democracy. And it is a merit of Speranza's book that it also addresses the fragility of democracies.
In order to prevent future disasters, we must listen to our mountains and rivers: understand their ecological fragility and feed on their spiritual vitality. We must be aware of the latest scientific research in the field of ecology, as the second part of this book suggests, providing insights. It is crucial, in fact, to overcome that outdated model that equates trade and profit with 'development'. True development happens according to the laws of Mother Earth, the laws of the sacred Himalayas and the sacred Ganges. Kindness and respect, reverence and love are needed.
What this book - another woman's book - tells us very well is that if respected, our rivers are rivers of life and, if violated, they can become rivers of death.
Preface
Hydro-politics: For an Integrative Strategy
by Pasquale Ferrara
Ambassador and university professor of International Relations
Water is definitely a central issue in international relations in the 21st century. Almost always, however, the narratives on the water dimension of world politics refer to a competitive, if not conflictual, logic, as if water is the primary resource destined to replace, in international relations, what oil or gas, and even before that coal and steel, were for the 20th century.
In reality, water as a factor in international politics has a structurally ambivalent character. Most certainly, it is a source of disputes or disagreements that risk worsening, as in the case of the 'Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam' (Gerd) project on the Blue Nile, which has created tensions first and foremost with Egypt, which fears an impact on the flow of the Nile. While in the collective imagination the Nile is unquestionably connected to Egypt, reality, on the other hand, indicates a very wide hydrographic basin encompassing ten different countries. Egypt, precisely, but also Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is because the Main Nile originates in Khartoum, from the union of the waters of the Blue Nile and the White Nile, which in turn originate respectively from Lake Tana in Ethiopia and Lake Victoria, whose waters include the borders of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The tensions that arise around cross-border waters ('hydro-political interactions') affect particularly sensitive issues such as national security, economic opportunities, environmental sustainability and equity. This is a global issue: almost 40 per cent of the world's population depends on river systems shared by two or more countries.
The 'peace canal' project between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea (with desalination and hydroelectric plants) goes in the direction of détente and shared intentions. Its realisation, however, is on the one hand linked to the full agreement of Israel, Jordan, and Palestine, and on the other hand to the search for substantial funding from international bodies, primarily the World Bank. In this case, the link between water, infrastructure and politics would be interpreted pragmatically and in terms of both economic and negotiating dividends for all actors involved.
The question of water, therefore, cannot be separated from larger and more complex issues. The multidimensional approach of this volume by Fausta Speranza well reflects the interconnection, the cross-references, the ramifications of this theme, between politics and ecology, between ethics and aesthetics, between history and prophecy, between archetypes and testimonies. A contribution to reflection that helps clarify the intertwining of events and approaches that have always been connected to the symbolic and pragmatic issue of water.
A case that is paradigmatic in its own way is the Lake Chad crisis. It is one of the most important water 'reservoirs' in Africa, from which all the surrounding areas belonging to four different states draw: Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger. Unfortunately, the area of this reservoir has shrunk by about 90 per cent compared to the 1970s. The Lake Chad emergency, in reality, is a combination of several crises. In fact, a series of factors make the context particularly precarious: climate change has increased the environmental vulnerability of an already fragile region, leading to severe drought and negative consequences on agriculture and food security, as well as water shortage; at the same time, there is a strong demographic increase (Niger and Chad have some of the highest fertility rates in the world); the fall in the cost of oil per barrel has led to an increase in inflation and the cost of goods of first necessity. In addition to this, there is a widespread level of corruption, which thrives when 'legal' economic opportunities are reduced, and when the poverty belts widen; population is exposed to the shortcuts of transnational crime; new migratory tensions arise. Boko Haram, the terrorist group founded in 2002, operates in the region, primarily in the north-east of Nigeria, but has now pushed into neighbouring countries with the aim of destabilising the entire area. The multi-vector crisis in Lake Chad is above all a demonstration of the very close connection between apparently separate phenomena such as environmental chaos, terrorism, migration, underdevelopment.
A 2006 but still relevant report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), entirely dedicated to water ( Beyond scarcity: power, poverty and the global water crisis) is very clear on the implications for human development and trans-national water-related situations. 'Water security' is part of the broader concept of human security, and implies that when access to water is interrupted, human beings face very serious risks in terms of health conditions and unavailability of livelihoods. With regard to cross-border aspects, the aforementioned report states that even if countries emanate laws regarding water considering it a national good, the fact remains that the resource itself crosses political borders without any passport, passing in the form of rivers or lakes. Moreover, cross-border waters connect users located in different countries into a shared system. Managing this interdependence is one of the major human development challenges the international community has to face.
I would add that a shared management of the planet's water resources brings us back to the question of global commons, and to the certainly not theoretical problem of non-excludability (universal access) and non-rivalry (inclusive use).
The only way to resolve these intertwined water issues in the international arena is probably to free water from a concept of sovereignty and introduce solutions that move in the direction of integration, i.e. towards the exercise of a functional and shared sovereignty. An integrated water sovereignty is a responsible sovereignty, not only towards citizens, but towards concrete people and their needs, and above all towards future generations.
Introduction
The value of the technological gamble
by Francesco Profumo
Academic, former president of the National Research Council and Minister of Education, University and Research
Water, which in this book is analysed under various aspects, but also taken as a symbol of the whole environmental issue, poses decisive questions in the technologically powerful yet ambiguous era we live in. Artificial intelligence mechanisms and dynamics are establishing themselves; work processes are increasingly automated, people are more and more in symbiosis with digital tools, but all this is happening while the planet is being consumed to the point of threatening water security. We achieve unthinkable successes, but we do not know, or do not want to know, how to solve fundamental issues in which the existence and dignity of the human being are put into play.
Technology can be the first ally in the search for possible solutions, as is illustrated in the second part of the book, and this gives hope, but it cannot be enough. A balance made up of processes of resource destruction, starting with the most essential for life, and parallel efforts to curb these processes cannot work. On the contrary, the entire system of relations between human beings, technology and the environment must be rethought. It is fundamental, therefore, to put the message of Pope Francis' Encyclical Laudato si' alongside the examination of environmental disasters, the prospects of green technology, and also the humanistic, religious and artistic heritage, as the author does. All spheres of knowledge, in fact, are called upon to cooperate if, as it seems evident, it is time to develop a kind of adequate new anthropology that is up to the new technological-scientific opportunities. That can inspire and guide a political commitment that meets the challenges.
The mythological story of Prometheus comes to mind. He is the titan who gives men fire, which remains the symbol of technology. His name in Greek is Προμηθεύς and means 'he who reflects first'. Alone the name chosen is an invitation to careful and conscious behaviour, which in the whirling dynamics of today's world would seem to be against the tide. Among the various events narrated, the Titan, after having given fire to men, steals the casket in which the goddess Athena stores intelligence and memory. It is like saying, that he could not deliver technology to mankind without critical thinking. Albert Einstein warned us: “One day machines will be able to solve all problems, but none will ever be able to pose one”.
We are experiencing an epochal change, which we call the 'digital revolution', in which not only digital technologies, but also physical and biological technologies interact, not forgetting the transformations of technocracy and technopolitics. We are dealing with a cultural transformation of enormous significance, as crucial and exciting as The Sense of Thirst explains .
If we can ask algorithms to develop ways of action, we cannot delegate to machines the task of properly directing the use of technological power and its implications. These are not easy challenges, but basically it is simple to realise that we need willpower and to do this it is good to start from the simplicity of water.
Introduction
Economy of Life
by Leonardo Becchetti
University Professor of Political Economy
Water is definitely an essential good for life on the planet. The challenge of the environmental sustainability of our development today jeopardises its actual availability in the minimum quantities necessary to live a decent life for all inhabitants of the planet.
The industrial revolution has enabled us to make extraordinary progress. In the year of Christ's birth, the average life span on the planet was about 23 years (if we also take into account the burden of infant mortality) and the planet was inhabited by about 230 million people. Today there are about 7.8 billion with an average life of 73 years. Scientific and technological progress in combination with the industrial revolution 'gives' today's humanity a stock of 378.5 billion more years of life than 2020 years ago. However, this enormous development has brought us to the natural limits of the planet. One of the most important dimensions of the limits of sustainability is precisely water availability. Today, it is estimated that there are 2.1 billion people in the world who have no access to clean water at home and a thousand children die every day in the world from diarrhoea caused by infected water. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 60 per cent of the world's population does not have adequate sanitation and about four billion people suffer from water scarcity for at least one month a year.
Water scarcity, disputed between alternative uses, creates dilemmas such as the one of the great dam on the São Francisco river near Brasilia, where the reduction in rainfall has progressively made less and less rich a treasure to be divided between the needs of the hydroelectric industry, which needs abundant water and waterfalls to produce more energy for large urban centres, farmers who demand it for grape and guava crops, and fishermen who see their fishing basin progressively shrinking.
It is no coincidence, therefore, that among the six main dimensions of the environmental challenge identified at the global level we find that of the water footprint and that Goal 6 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals relates precisely to the availability of clean water and sanitation.
Our goals on a global level in this regard are to:
- ensure access to sanitation by putting an end to open defecation.
- improve water quality and wastewater treatment and increase its safe reuse.
- increase efficiency in water use and guarantee drinking water supplies.
- implement integrated water resource management.
- protect and restore water-related ecosystems.
- expand support for water and sanitation activities in developing countries.
- support the participation of local communities in water and sanitation management.
If we want to reach them, we have to start and combine all our solidarity and all our innovative skills to tackle and solve the problem. The key issues are equal opportunity access to water resources and technologies to regenerate and manage them efficiently and without waste.
Some good practices show the way. In New Zealand, parliament passes a law establishing the Whanganui River (the country's third longest river) as a legal entity. The Netherlands systematises its experience in water resource management by promoting the expertise of companies skilled in managing water problems, which are increasingly relevant to the future of the planet. Interesting examples arise in various areas of the world (from Burkina Faso to the United States) where the limits of the private for-profit and the public sector have been noted; we consider promising a third way of the private non-profit social sector in which, in deference to a principle of participation and subsidiarity, user communities play a fundamental role in the governance of management companies under the regulation of an independent authority.
It is for these reasons that Fausta Speranza's book, which is both a denounce and a proposal and is full of examples and experiences gathered in various corners of the globe, is an essential contribution that helps us to move forward. Denouncing critical situations and pooling good practices is the first step we must take to overcome the challenge.
Part One
"Water is unique on Earth in showing all three of its faces - solid, liquid and vapour - to the stars".
(Philip Ball)
In a “liquid” modernity
“This was a clash between two cultures: a culture that sees water as sacred
and treats its provision as a duty for the preservation of life and another that
sees water as a commodity, and its ownership and trade as fundamental
corporate rights.”
(Vandana Shiva)
