Judith D. Schwartz - Water in Plain Sight

Water in Plain Sight

Hope for a Thirsty World

Judith D. Schwartz

St. Martins Press

New York

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To my parents, Pauline and Alvin Schwartz

Water in Plain Sight

Its unseasonably warm for December in Paris, and the ice is melting. The ice, harvested as icebergs from a fjord in Greenland, is an art installation set up at the historic Place du Panthon. The twelve blocks, each weighing more than 20,000 pounds, are arranged in a circle to form a clock. In winter, dusk in Paris is a leisurely affair, sprawling across the hours like lunch in a side - street brasserie. Its nearly dark when I reach the square, but the ice chunks, some taller than the people wandering among them, have their own glow, a kind of glinting charisma. People pose by the blocks, snapping photos. Children, holding onto their parents hands, touch the ice and giggle at its smooth coldness. Some young children, in snowsuits and wool hats, are in strollers. I wonder what their parents are saying when they bend down to explain that each drop of dissolving water ticks off another moment toward the potential destruction of earths climate as we know it?

Water was a presence at COP21, the international conference on climate change in which 195 countries agreed to place limits on greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to curb global warming.

Water was central to the emergence of the high ambition coalition, as island and other low - lying nations pressed for more stringent emissions limits. Leaders from states such as the Marshall Islands in the Pacific and St. Lucia in the Caribbean noted that if expected warming trends continue, their very existence was under threat.

Water was a theme at the International Rights of Nature Tribunal, held at the Maison des Mtallos, formerly a steelworkers union hall and now a cultural venue in the 11th arrondissement. Among the cases brought before the judges in the packed hall was the Commercialization of Nature, in which the provisions of nature, such as clean water, become products to be bought and sold. Other hearings condemned the building of megadams that would displace indigenous communities, and oil and mineral extraction that damages rivers and other water sources.

Water was on the agenda at the Peoples Climate Summit in Montreuil, a suburb with a picturesque old - world square at Pariss eastern edge, where more than a hundred citizen - driven workshops and discussions took place. Along with two friends, from Spain and Mexico, respectively, I headed up a steep hill to a vast, fortress - like school for a panel on water and climate. We were joined by an orderly stream of students and activists, including members of the Grandparents Climate Campaign from Norway some very tall men and women in red hats and pinnies en route to various events. Jean - Claude Oliva, director of the organization Coordination Eau le - de - France , opened the water and climate forum by saying, Water tends to be seen as related to the consequences of climate, but not as an inherent part of climate change. And yet, human activities have been affecting the water cycle in a way that is affecting climate change. This shows we can actually act on climate change through our water practices.

And water was part of numerous random conversations. I was in Paris in December 2015 during COP21 with a group called Regeneration International, a global network of activists, scientists and communicators. I was bunking in an eight - bed room in a backpackers hostel that housed a lively nightclub downstairs. One morning I ran into Hayu Patria, who had joined our room sometime during the night, having just arrived from Indonesia. She told me that in the village where she works in East Java, the spring water is among the finest in the world. Now that the water is being privately bottled by Aqua, a subsidiary of Danone, the local people are struggling to get clean water. They have to walk several kilometers to get water, she said. Its hard work. Its a mountainous area so theyre climbing up and down.

Water connects us all. It connects highlands and lowlands, and communities upstream to cities at the coast. Bodies of water transcend national boundaries, and so create incentives for groups to cooperate and trade. Waterways offered a means of travel long before anyone dreamed of riding on wheels. And, of course, water connects us socially: the universal gesture of peace and hospitality is to offer another person something to drink.

Water is a point of connection for many of our global challenges as well as for solutions. Protecting water resources, such as maintaining moisture in soil, can help mitigate against climate change. The water cycle interacts with all basic biophysical cycles: the carbon cycle, the energy cycle and the nutrient cycle. The better we understand this, and the better we appreciate how water processes relate to alleviating poverty and hunger, reversing desertification, and rebuilding biodiversity, the more equipped we will be to take on the difficulties of our time.

In this book, I hope to put water in context: to explore how water works and highlight waters role in other timely concerns. To do so, Ill share stories of water innovators from around the world who are finding new routes to water security strategies and insights with important implications for food justice, economic resilience and climate change. These stories will take us from Mexico to Africa to Australia, from deserts to mountains to rainforests.

We begin in Zimbabwe, a country in southern Africa that falls at the end of the alphabet and which ranks near last on just about every other social and economic indicator. Here, among the wild elephants and antelope and dusty, degraded landscapes, well find revived rivers and pastures and hope for a thirsty world.

Making Rainfall Effective

The scene which met my eyes the next morning is beyond my power to describe. Game, game everywhere, as far as the eye could see all on the move, grazing. The game did not appear to be moving; the impression I received was that the earth was doing so, carrying the game with it they were in such vast numbers... hundreds of thousands of blesbok, springbok, wildebeest, and many others were all around us.

George Mossop, southern Africa, 1860s

Water has reappeared in a remote corner of rural Zimbabwe, some ten minutes of scarcely drivable dirt road off the Victoria FallsBulawayo road and into the bush.

This new water has replenished the Dimbangombe River, which now extends a full kilometer farther upstream than anyone, including the chiefs and elders of the five local tribes, can remember. Even now, in September, the parched heart of the dry season with the hope of rain still a good two months away, theres a steady flow where the Dimbangombe now meets the slightly larger Tsitsingombe River. This revived juncture is marked by a large winterthorn tree, a tree treasured in these parts because, unlike most trees, it holds on to its green leaves through the dry months, only to drop them once it rains.