Chevening joins Blog Action Day – H2O…..

Women and children are badly affected by the absence of water and sanitation services; therefore women and children will get the most benefit from water and sanitation development program.

Rini astute, Indonesia

Water shortage is a serious problem that faces the Middle East and Palestine is no exception. In addition to the arid/semi arid climate, the Palestinians are faced with another human-induced shortage of water. Israel has been controlling and restricting Palestinians from using their natural water resources. Israel is using around 80% of the available natural water resources of the West Bank aquifers thus reinforcing inequitable and unjust difficulties on the Palestinians.

Muna Dajani, Palestinian

We should rethink how technology can help to mitigate current water problems. Information and communication technologies potentiate a better understanding of how these problems arise in distant and local places, while we can share solutions and results. Lets share the problem and the solutions.

Dr. Luis M Martinez, Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico

One can judge the economic development of a country by whether or not one can drink water from the tap. Think about Mexico, for instance, no one in her five senses would drink the fluid from the tap unless you were at a luxury beach resort. The normal thing to do is buying water from the waterman. The waterman drives a truck loaded with 40-litre bottles, each costing around £2.2 apiece; he is an employee of companies like Ciel or Bonafont, which as we all know, are owned by Coca Cola and Danone, the American and French food & beverages empire. At home, with only 2 household members, we buy 3 of these bottles every week, for a total £686 per year. Imagine how much money goes in drinking-water, considering there are a little over 25 million households in the country? Obviously, not everyone drinks water from Ciel or Danone, since many little companies have mushroomed in the last two decades, selling purified water which many times cause stomach illnesses. In any case, at present Mexico is amongst the world’s largest consumers of Coca-Cola products and of bottled water. One of the reasons that explain this high consumption of Coca-Cola has been the fact that over 40 million people live in poverty, which means drinking-water ends up turning more expensive than the fizzy stuff. If the same trend applies for the rest of the world, one could speculate that underdeveloped and developing countries with no drinking-water from the tap are the best places for “Big Food” companies to make money, which means that at least for Coca-Cola stock holders, poverty is good!

Dr. Gabriel A. Moreno E, Universidad de Guadalajara

Water is a cardinal issue in the Middle East. Any year there is a drought, it makes headlines. There has almost always been a water crisis in the Middle East. Population growth always expanded to the limits of the scarcest available resource. In Syria (my country) hundreds of thousands have left their homes in east and north east of Syria in the last few years after the drought affected them as they are an agriculture society. Those people settled in big cities such as Damascus and Aleppo with very poor living conditions.

Bahjat Haddad, Syria

The future of conflict will be shaped by what has been called “resource wars”: competition for diminishing resources for an increasing population. Water is the most important natural resource. Access to it has always shaped how societies develop. Perhaps it will provoke the cruellest conflicts when it will be scarce and invaluable.

Angel Blanco Sorio, Caracas, Venezuela

Water is one of the essentials of our daily life. I would like to say something from both the micro and macro level. For individuals we should save water and try to make best use of every drop of water through watching and bettering our daily habits of water using. While from the macro level, solutions to this may lie in international aid from the rich countries to poor countries, like providing the bottled water, on one hand and the further technology development which will find more efficient and feasible ways to desalinating sea water.
 
2010 Chevening scholar, Zirui Peng, China

Future issues of water security will globally match present issues of energy security. Climate change will have a significant impact on European and global water resources. Since the relation between precipitation and water availability is not linear, predicted changes in precipitaton will lead to significantly greater changes in water availability.

Milos Brckalo, Serbia

The production of food, grains and crops requires water. Exporting food from water-scarce (mostly poor) countries means exporting their water as well. Let’s keep that in mind when discussing about securing poor countries water supply.

Arturo Padilla Hernandez, Mexico