Problems with water

(Amended - 10/09/2019)

Watch this space! Water, or rather the lack of it, is going to cause us all a great deal of trouble in the future. And I don’t mean just in Australia, with the problems over the Murray/Darling river complex (with various States accusing each other of drawing too much water for irrigation purposes).

We treat this vital resource with scant regard. Each country with shared resources wants it for itself and this is where tensions arise. There are already tensions over the Jordan River which has its source in Lebanon and flows through Israel, where water is drawn off for irrigation. 

Then there is the mighty Mekong River in South East Asia, shared between China, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia – tensions are rising there too, principally because of accusations of dam building without regard for other users of the river – or the effect on the river’s eco-systems. 

The ‘blue’ Danube in Europe is not what it once was – it passes through quite a few countries before it reaches the Black Sea and is heavily polluted. In Russia the Aral Sea is now but a fraction of what it once was – what were once ports are now ‘towns’ many kilometres from the current shore line. Similarly many waterways in Russia are heavily polluted – a legacy of the old Soviet “industrialize at any cost” approach to development.

China has environmental and ecological problems with silting in the newly constructed ‘Three Gorges Dam’ on the Yangtze River and people down-stream who relied on the annual flooding for nutrient soil have now to use fertilizers. Many other rivers and waterways are now so polluted that animals are dying (there are reports about thousands of dead animals found floating in various waterways). China is only now waking up to the consequences of their “industrialize at any cost” approach to development which they inherited from their former communist mentor – Soviet Russia.

 Africa generally has huge problems with water quality and supply – there is just not enough, and what there is, is generally badly managed. The high Aswan dam on the Nile has stopped the annual flooding which, for thousands of years, has provided the nutrient rich soil in the flood plain; it has also killed of the fishery industry at Nile delta. 

Cape Town, in South Africa, recently had an unprecedented water shortage. Other parts of Africa, such as Zimbabwe are similarly affected.

The USA is not much better. A recent Environmental Protection Agency statement reported that data from 2,000 rivers and streams in 2008-2009, the most recent figures available (that I can find), showed 55 percent of waterways to be in “poor condition for aquatic life” with a dearth of vegetation which worsens erosion. 

Mexico City relies on underground aquifers and has drawn so much water that parts of the city have subsided (and are still subsiding) causing massive disruptions to the provision of services to parts of this city of fifteen million people.

Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital is sinking because of the over use of ground water. The Indonesian government is embarking on an ambition plan to relocate the capital to a new city on a “green fields” site in Borneo.

It has been predicted that as populations increase the adequate supply of potable water will be a primary cause of future conflict between nations. Those that have it will protect their sources and those without will have to fight to get some. 

So, as I said earlier, watch this space!

Injustice and conflict never end – why?

Injustice will never end because there will always be people who consider themselves better than others, or different, or they will somehow justify their actions by believing they have a special need that no one else could conceivably have. Possibly more pervasive is the “belief” that a particular gender, skin colour or religious persuasion gives a “right” to persecute or denigrate those not of that gender, that skin colour or not of that religious persuasion.

This type of “injustice” happens everywhere. Take for example Israel’s flouting international law and ignoring United Nations requests for them to stop their annexation of Palestine, by stealth, with their continued building of new Jewish settlements in occupied lands. (I choose to mention Israel as their apparently intractable difference with the Palestinians affects us all and Israel is a topical issue in Australia at the moment vide “Prisoner X” and the apparent injustice of this incident).

The differences (at least in the Middle East), and the injustice, appear to stem from a strict adherence, by their followers, to the required observances written in two books – the Old Testament - the Jewish Torah, and the Koran – the book of Islam, and to the sacredness or otherwise of the land now claimed by both Israelis and the Palestinians.   

If the situation was reversed I am sure that Israelis would defend by every means at their disposal their “right” to claim what "should" be theirs. But they deny the Palestinians that very “right”.

There are always two sides to every story, as the saying goes, and the Palestinians are not blameless in this. They apparently object to a Jewish presence in their “homeland”. All this may be relevant and true but it is important to go behind the need (if that is the correct word) for injustice, whomsoever the perpetrator and wherever it takes place.

All humans are diminished – the human family is diminished - by injustice. In this regard it seems almost impossible for humans generally to accept the fact that we need each other; that we cannot live in total isolation; that our “needs”, our desires and wishes are much the same as those of everyone else.

In other words we need to observe the “Golden Rule” - to treat others as we would like to be treated. ALL religions, ALL moral teachings and ethical concepts have the “Golden Rule” as the cornerstone and principle for ALL effective human relationships.

For those who believe in the importance of “differences” this may be an unpleasant idea and difficult to accept. It is important, however, for them to realise that theirs is an intellectual resistance to Nature which seems to demand that mankind include others in their schemes lest their selfish desires lead to general chaos and destruction. But even with Nature’s inner demand and all the centuries of ethical and moral teachings it is patently evident that mankind (to paraphrase Jung) “has only very imperfectly learned that it is in his own interest to consider his neighbour and that it is impossible for him to ignore the needs of the body social of which he is a part”.

It is necessary to remember that conflict (more often than not the result of some injustice) can never be resolved at the level at which was created – at that level there can only be winners and losers – not reconciliation. Resolution and reconciliation needs a greater understanding of human nature and a higher level of awareness and education.

Resorting to laws, rules and regulations or ancient texts (however sacred) with the same mindset that held at the onset of the conflict (or the injustice) will not resolve anything.

Written on the gravestone of Paul Robeson (African American singer April 9, 1898 – Jan 26, 1976): “The artist must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative.”

This is why without real education for all (not just “book learning”) we face the rather depressing idea that injustice will never end.

Consequences.

There are always consequences for anything we do. These consequences cannot be avoided or limited in any way – each one of us feels the effect of these, both negative and positive, on a daily basis. We do ‘good’ things and good things happen; we do ‘bad’ things and bad things happen.

The thing is that we can never, or at best very seldom, tie any specific action or behaviour or sequences of actions or behaviours, to any particular consequence or sequence of consequences. There are some obvious ones certainly – aim a gun at someone and pull the trigger and there is a very good likelihood of injuring or killing them; spend more money than you earn and you end up in debt. These are brutal, up front, in your face type consequences. What I am talking about are the subtle ones that are not immediately obvious; the ones that may take years to work their way through the ‘system’ as it were.

Take two current problems the World is facing at the moment, which are consequences of activities, actions, behaviours and thought patterns that go back many years – generations in fact. The first one is ‘climate change’ and the second is the Middle East (Israel, Gaza, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan).

Now whatever you think about the science behind the various claims and counter claims supporting or denying Man’s involvement in this debate one fact (to me) is obvious. We CANNOT continue to despoil, pillage and exploit the resources of the world as we are doing at the present moment. We cannot continue doing what we are now without suffering consequences of some sort. More of the same will be disastrous – there will be consequences we cannot predict but only sense.

I know that climate change – natural change – has always been a feature of geological time; ice-ages, extreme volcanic activity playing havoc with weather patterns and such like. This is natural and I have no argument with this – we can’t do anything about it anyway – it just happens and we (here we go) have to live with the consequences. My point is that by doing nothing we are not HELPING nature, the World, the Gaia, or whatever you call it, to recover naturally. And it will recover naturally – with time but we are not giving it that time.

Exploitative human activity is damaging the Nation and ‘our’ World to the detriment of all.

• Soil degradation. Much of our precious topsoils is either blown away (dust storms) or washed away (soil erosion) each year. Poor environmental planning and farming practices are the cause.

• Excessive use of chemical fertilizers. Because of the soil degradation more and more chemicals are being used which produce foods that are not as nutritious as they should be. They are deficient in essential minerals.

• Water. The essential element for life on earth. In the case of fresh water, in quantity, storage and quality, improvements are vital for the future health of the Nation and the World.

• Industrial activity. In the quest for ever increasing profits enormous quantities of toxic and polluting substances are being pumped into the atmosphere, the soil and water (both fresh and salt) of our Nation and the World. Huge tracts of land are being cleared of trees and other vegetation for what – profit?

These are just a few aspects of the immensely complex and interwoven matrix which I consider comes under the umbrella of ‘climate change’. We are in a position to do SOMETHING (my preferred option) rather than NOTHING (as advocated by the sceptics). Just think about it, even if, as some of the sceptics believe, the world is getting colder, not hotter, how will this help? It will just herald a new dark-age with shorter growing seasons.

From an economic point of view I suspect we are going to suffer, one way or another. This will be the consequence of thoughtlessness, of greed and the extreme capitalistic ideal of ‘profit’, no matter the cost (in the lives of all flora and fauna and economic cost).

Now for the second big problem – the conflict in the Middle East. This goes back a long time. Without going into a detailed history of the region one could really consider the problem as being the consequence of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire (after the First World War) and the British withdrawal from India (and Pakistan) and Iraq and the West’s interference in Iran and Palestine. The immediate cause, I suspect, is the false idea that the ‘West’ can impose its will, its ideas and its manner of living on peoples who trying to work out their own responses to their environment and to world events.

To think, even for a moment, that peace will be established by the production of greater numbers of ever more complex weapons is madness. Most of us have still to learn that peace is not external, but an internal state, that then translates to all things external. How can there ever be peace if nations or groups of people are constantly thinking about and preparing for war? How can there ever be peace if people are constantly thinking violent and warlike thoughts? It is never going to happen.

A cessation of violence or truce may be established if someone or some nation subdues another by being stronger or having a bigger and better army. But that is not peace. Think of the Korean conflict in the 1950s and how about the various Israeli/Palestinian conflicts. There has never been peace in these areas. We need to think ‘outside the box’ and use our accumulated wisdom in a rational, measured and reasonable manner.

There is no peace because the underlying problem has never been addressed – injustice, perceived or actual, is at the root of most conflicts and will be the root of the Middle East and the Korean problems. Sort out the injustices (perceived or otherwise) and the reason for the violence is removed. There is nothing that rankles and festers in the mind as much as injustice. If individuals have a feeling they have been hard done by and bear a grudge because of this then, rightly or wrongly, they will feel justified in fighting (as they may think) to redress the injustice.