Photographer : rei-bo
So there’s no water today. It’s no surprise, really. Like every other day you walk a few metres from your little stone house to the local ayn (the water fountain) in order to fill up. You reach the ayn only to find nothing. Zilch. Where has all the water gone?
Suddenly there’s chaos. Everyone is in uproar. Even the children are waving their fists
THEY DID IT AGAIN!
Expecting to see villagers running mad with pitchforks aimed at one another, you suddenly wake up and realise that you’re not living in a secluded village in the north of Lebanon and this must have been in another lifetime, or something from a dream.
Because no one fights over water these days (or so you thought)
Perhaps the reason I’m dreaming about local water disputes has something to do with my grandparents. I grew up with stories of how my father’s village in Lebanon was at war with my mother’s village over the water supply. Despite the village being a stone’s throw away, there were accusations that one was stealing water from the other. I’ve heard all the jokes about the old rivalry from back in the day when the small things in life, like a fresh stream of water from the mountains, mattered most. I would meet strangers from one village, who would react with,
‘Your dad is from WHERE? They stole our water!’
No, YOU stole OUR water!’
As a product of the two ‘water war villages’, I’ve had my fair share of this playful animosity, which mainly consists of the older generation wondering if I’m a spy and whether or not they can trust me, because, after all ‘she is one of them!’
But it’s all in jest. It’s not like anyone would kill over water...
...right?
My grandmother reassures me that it was never so serious and now the villages share their water equally. But as a young person in Australia who sees water coming from a tap rather than an exhaustible hole in the ground, I can’t ever imagine feeling hostile towards my neighbour for taking long showers and hosing the garden.
I suppose that’s because countries in the Middle East are more aware of the importance of water and the consequences of not having enough of it. To safeguard against potential conflict, there were once talks of building a pipeline running from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon, exchanging water for oil. This would have sustained countries throughout the Middle East, were it not for the outcry that emanated from Israel and the US. Suffice to say, the plan didn’t go ahead.
If the world can’t agree on sharing water when there’s plenty to go around, how will it manage to avoid conflict when there’s not enough?
The United Nations estimates that by the year 2025, 65% of the world’s population could be without an adequate water supply. If water is something we cannot survive without, it makes sense that leaders would go to war to maintain control of it. Although Kofi Annan believes that fierce competition for fresh water may be the source of conflict and wars in the future, he also affirms that "the water problems of our world need not be only a cause of tension; they can also be a catalyst for cooperation’. So rather than get caught up in the politics of water, shouldn’t we be trying to find ways to share what we already have?
If access to water is a fundamental human right then shouldn’t we all be allowed to have our water and drink it too?
Perhaps the best thing anyone can do, no matter where they are in the world, is appreciate clean, available drinking water. Rather than view it as something that will always be there, we should change old habits to prevent this apocalyptic vision of a world fighting over water.
While we don’t have to think about villages sabotaging our water supply, one day we might have to ask the question ‘is there more water where that came from?’
And if there isn’t, will our generation be the one fighting for the last drop?
How do I know this?
Carius, A 2001, ‘Water, Conflict and Cooperation’,
United Nations,
http://www.un-globalsecurity.org/pdf/Carius_Dabelko_Wolf.pdf
Darwish, A. 1994, ‘Water Wars – The next major conflict in the Middle East’,
Middle East News, http://www.mideastnews.com/WaterWars.htm
Gorbachev, M. 2005, ‘Solving global water crisis moral imperative’,
United Nations
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2005/envdev847.doc.htm
Trappleton, 2006, ‘Water Shortages’,
ActNow
http://www.actnow.com.au/Issues/Water_shortages.aspx
Wikipedia, Trans-Arabian Pipeline Company,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Arabian_Pipeline_Company (as of Nov. 8, 2006).
