|
22 March has been designated World Water Day. For those who have never experienced anything worse than a temporary hose pipe ban, this may seem irrelevant. But for the millions of people who have seen their scanty water sources decline year by year, it is literally a matter of life and death.
The population of many of the world's poorer countries continues to rise. Changing weather patterns throw farming into disarray. And ever more water is required to satisfy the world's insatiable desire for meat. All these factors and more contribute to a catastrophic shortage of water in many places. There are, of course, vast underground aquifers, but they are not inexhaustible. The amount of water we are taking from them is more than 400 million tons a day more than is being replaced by rain.
Although the Millennium Development Goal to halve the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water has, remarkably, been achieved, 780 million people are still waiting. And 2.5 billion have no safe sanitation.
As Christians, we may rejoice in the Bible's figurative use of water, as representing life or the Holy Spirit. 'Come, everyone who is thirsty', cries God through Isaiah, 'come to the waters' (55:1). And Revelation gives us a vision of 'the river of the water of life... flowing from the throne of God' (22:1). But this is not an issue that can be 'spiritualised' away. Scripture also speaks of the material dimension of the created environment: 'Streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground... The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it' (Genesis 2:6, 15).
Human beings who have so mastered nature as to create technologies that pollute the earth must surely have the capacity to find new ways of capturing, storing and using water. But is there the will?
So what can we do? Remembering that water and sanitation make more difference to healthy living than anything else, we can urge our politicians to place this unfashionable topic at the top of their development agenda. As we enjoy our power showers and washing machines, we can pray for those for whom these are unimaginable luxuries. And we can resolve to focus humanitarian giving on this critical and universal need.
Father, give me honesty and compassion.
Helen Parry
|