Allerd Stikker - Water: The Blood of the Earth: Exploring Sustainable Water Management for the New Millennium

WATER
THE BLOOD OF THE EARTH

Exploring Sustainable
Water Management for
the New Millennium

Allerd Stikker

Water: The Blood of the Earth

Exploring Sustainable Water Management for the New Millennium 2007 Allerd Stikker. Published by Cosimo Books in 2007.

ISBN: 978-1-61640-589-2

Cover 2007 Cosimo, Inc. Cover Design by Ken Johanson. Front Cover Photo by Leonor Lindner. Back Cover image istockphoto.com, #2686552. Interior image (p.8) istockphoto.com, #438984; Interior image (p.35) 2007 by Martijn Nitzsche.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage, and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

Visit the Ecological Management Foundation at:

www.emf.nl

For information, visit www.cosimobooks.com.

Ordering Information:

Cosimo publications are available at online bookstores. They may also be purchased for educational, business or promotional use:

Bulk orders: special discounts are available on bulk orders for reading groups, organizations, businesses, and others. For details contact Cosimo Special Sales at the address above or at

Custom-label orders: we can prepare selected books with your cover or logo of choice. For more information, please contact Cosimo at

Now water is the blood and the breath of the earth, flowing and
communicating as if in muscles and veins. Therefore we say that
water is the preparatory raw material of all things. How do we
know that this is so? The answer is that water is yielding, weak,
and clean, and likes to wash away the evils of man. This may be
called its benevolence. It sometimes looks black, sometimes white;
this may be called its essence. When you measure it you cannot
force it to level off at the top, for when the vessel is full it does that
by itself. This may be called its rectitude. There is no space into
which it will not flow, and when it is level it stops. This may be
called its fairness. People all like to go up higher, but water runs to
the lowest possible place. This principle of going down to the bottom
is the Palace of the Tao, and the instrument of true rulers.
The bottom is where water goes and lives.

Kuan Tzu, fourth century BC

Allerd Stikker has a profound understanding of the water problems worldwide. His book rightly recommends and makes a strong case for tackling the scarcity of clean water through micro enterprise in small communities, often empowered by micro credit. I fully subscribe to this approach as my own experience confirmed on the use of mobile phones in Bangladesh, working on the same principle.

Iqbal Quadir, founder,
GrameenPhone Limited

Allerd Stikker has always reminded me of Alexis de Tocqueville, who would have chosen to study the problem surrounding water rather than the American democracy. He has the same insatiable curiosity, the same energy, same passion, same ease in mixing analysis with intuition, the capacity to draw together different cultures, the same capacity to listen and to dialogue with those who reason from different starting blocks.

Water: The Blood of the Earth is the outcome of reflection and action of a cosmopolitan who has remained loyal to his native land, mixing some European thinking of the Age of Enlightenment with some futuristic viewpoints.

Charles Louis de Maudhuy,
advisor to the chairman, Veolia Water

Heineken, with more than 125 breweries worldwide, is very dependent on water, being a major raw material for beer manufacturing. Corporation wide responsible water management has high priority in relation to the communities where we operate. The comprehensive overview in this book of the world water situation demonstrates the context within which we exercise our corporate responsibility on water.

Karel Vuursteen,
former CEO, Heineken

We at TNO share the vision in this book that economically and ecologically responsible technologies for desalination of sea and brackish water will substantially contribute to overcome future water scarcities in many parts of the world. In fact, this is an area of very active and successful innovation at our Research and Technology Organization and has been a subject of close cooperation with the author. In addition we execute applied research for innovations in the field of ground water management both related to quality and quantity.

Hans (J.C.) Huis in t Veld, MSc,
chairman, TNO Board of Management

Netherlands Water Partnership supports the efforts of Allerd Stikker and his Foundation EMF to promote small-scale solutions for water in rural communities in order to reach the UN Millennium Development Goals for Water in 2015.

For this purpose NWP, Aqua4All, EMF, and other water professionals in the Netherlands have developed a protocol for appropriate technologies for practical solutions in developing countries.

Jeroen van der Sommen,
managing director, NWP

Lack of access to clean and sufficient water in many parts of the world, especially in Asia and Africa, will be a major issue in the coming decades.

This book presents an overall view on the diversity of problems and solutions, based on the authors involvement in water-related projects. Over the course of the years I have followed some of these projects with interest; they inspire us to take concrete actions.

Antony Burgmans,
former chairman, Unilever

In this book Allerd describes his convincing views on desalination solutions for local and urban clean water shortages as well as his deeply felt findings on the spiritual meanings of water, all assembled on a 20 years journey on which I was lucky to travel along.

Leonor Lindner, corporate lawyer
and the authors life companion

A cknowledgements

I n this booklet I have written down personal experiences from more than twenty years of involvement in water issues, mainly through the Ecological Management Foundation (EMF) as an independent party. In some chapters I have mentioned the names of people that were important at the time of a breakthrough or a special event. I would like to stress that many more people other than the ones in this book were a source of inspiration and cooperation.

In particular, however, I want to mention the persons who for many years have supported my work and the ongoing activities of EMF with their lively dedication. They are the EMF board members in order of seniority: Simon Huyzer, Peter Hustinx, Jean Pierre Sweerts, Marjan van Lier, and Derk Stikker.

I also would like to name Lia Otterspeer, my loyal secretary at EMF since 1992, who especially contributed to the fulfilment and continuity of EMFs ventures over all these years.

Last but not least, I would like to mention the Chinese goddess Kuan Shih Yin, who has been my silent guide and the guardian of EMF ever since my experiences in Taiwan in the late Eighties, which will be covered in this book. Her name means She who listens to the sounds of the world.