WATER, WATER, EVERYWHERE...

[jacdon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

The following article will be published in the May 1, 2002, edition of
the Mid-Hudson  Activist Newsletter, published in New Paltz, N.Y.

WATER, WATER, EVERYWHERE...

By Jack A. Smith

Most inhabitants of the world?s rich countries assume that clean
drinking water, adequate sanitary facilities, and efficient disposal of
human wastes are a social given for people everywhere.  

But such elementary human rights in this technological day and age are
hardly accessible for 40% of the world?s population, amounting to 2.5
billion human beings who lack such amenities (including 1.1 billion
without access to pure water). The real human tragedy is that by the
year 2025 the number of those deprived of basic sanitation is expected
reach 50%, even as the ruling classes of wealthy societies anticipate
the accumulation of unparalleled riches.  By 2050, the UN estimates that
80% of the world population will be living in poor countries.

It?s hard to comprehend, but poor sanitary conditions are responsible
for some 2 million deaths of children every year, the majority of them
victims of diseases associated with diarrhea resulting from impure
drinking water. According to the UK?s Water Aid and Tearfund, which just
released a report on the subject called ?The Human Waste,? an
expenditure of $16 billion a year by the rich industrial nations on
improving sanitation in the developing countries (i.e., one-third of the
Bush administration?s increase in the military budget for next year)
could save 1 million child lives a year.  In time, as the sanitary
infrastructure grows, it should be possible to totally eliminate
water-borne killer diseases.

All told, according to a new report from UNICEF, the UN Children?s Fund,
about 11 million children die painful deaths annually from preventable
diseases -- tetanus, polio  and measles among them, in addition to
diarrhea -- deaths that could be prevented for comparative pennies a day
per child.  These youngsters are part of some 600 million children of
the world (more than twice the population of the United States) who live
in abject poverty amidst the plenty enjoyed in the developed countries,
nearly all of which functioned as the colonial or neocolonial rulers of
the world for long periods during the last 200 years.

These children are not suffering because the societies in which they
live are indifferent to their plight or are too ignorant or lazy to find
solutions.  Their poor societies are suffering as well, the result of
historic and continuing exploitation and oppression principally  by the
industrialized countries of Europe of North America, which have enriched
themselves by subjugating these peoples for generations.  The few times
extremely poor countries have managed to throw off their colonial and
neocolonial shackles and tried to establish well-ordered, progressive
societies, as in Angola or Nicaragua, the bully countries -- in the
first case South Africa and the United States, in the second the U.S.
alone   -- supported the forces of reaction that destroyed these dreams
of progress and sufficiency.  The only real money being made in Angola
today is stuffing the pockets of foreign oil countries.  In dirt-poor
Nicaragua, only the small upper class possesses material wealth.  In
both Africa and Latin America, the proportion of the population living
in poverty has increased in the last decade, while in the industrialized
countries the vaults of the corporate class overflowed from the
globalization of economic inequality.

The poverty-stricken billions of our world, most of whom are the
historic products of  oppression, manipulation, underdevelopment and the
misfortunes of climate,  require clean water, decent sanitary
facilities, enough food to survive, some schooling for the kids,
elementary healthcare, and sufficient minimal financial and technical
aid to get them moving in a good direction.  Given the opportunity, they
will start to make real progress for themselves in the societies they
chose to construct,  unless the old powerful masters return to impose
their economic, political, and cultural hegemony, once again subverting
the quest for national independence, economic sufficiency and political
self-determination.

If the extraordinarily productive global capitalist economic system
cannot even provide clean water and basic sanitation for 40% of the
world?s peoples, and improved living standards for the next 40%, then
it?s time to find a substitute --not for the water or sanitation, which
are required for survival, but for an economic model based on the
acquisition of profit for the few at the expense of human needs for the
many.  (end)


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