Managing Water: A 21st Century Challenge

 

“Famine and thirst sigh like a scythe across the field of statistics and the desert is a moving mouth.”

This article was written twenty years ago so it stands to reason that the 30-year-old gainfully employed or inside a galamsey pit was just ten years old so he might not be able to read and understand the piece. In fact, owners of the galamsey sites did not care to read the piece because it pinched them.  Now that our reserved forests and river bodies are seriously polluted, I have found it prudent to revisit this article.

Let me begin with this starling record on the water situation of the world. The planet is 71% water and less than 3% of it is fresh. Most of that is either in the form of ice and snow in Greenland and Antarctica or in deep groundwater aquifers. Less than 1% of that water of all the earth’s water is considered available for human needs; even then, much of it is far from large populations.

At the dawn of the 21st century, more than 1 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water. Worst of all, 3.4 million people die each year from water related diseases. Scientist say the adult human body is about 75% water, with up to 85% of human brain cells liquid; even teeth are 10% moisture! Very startling eh? That is the stark reality for you! So you see? The global governmental neglect behind those numbers is the most critical failure of the 20th Century and certainly the major challenge of the 21st century.

In parched Botswana, dominated by the Kalahari Desert, water is so precious that the national currency is called “Pula” – Rain in the Setswana language. There, the nickname of water is “blue gold”. Water in Botswana is so precious that it is a human right issue.

In many sub-saharan countries, according to the World Water Council, the average per capita water-use is 10 to 20 litres a day, which it called “undesirably low”. Beset by agricultural failure, fragile ecosystems, erratic weather, wars and other factors, records show that 18 sub-saharan countries face the severest problems in feeding their people.

Call these battlegrounds of contending doom and you will not be far from right. Generally, it seems we are facing a world water gap. Scientists, water professionals, environmental campaigners and others have warned for decades that a water crisis was building, but these alarm bells rang on many a deaf governmental ears. Like so much of the earth’s bounty, water is unevenly distributed. Whiles people in some parts of the world pile up sandbags to control seasonal floods or struggle to dry out after severe storm, others shrivel and die like their crops and their livestock before them. And yet others move on as environmental refugees, all because of unavailability of this thing called water.

Back home in Ghana, we must rethink water management. The truth is that we no longer live in an era, or a world, in which rivers can be endlessly dammed, aquifers relentlessly pumped and ecosystems are degraded and impoverished. We have to focus on how we use water. Go to the rich and opulent residential areas in Accra and Kumasi and see how rich men use potable water to water their flowers and you will see how selfish some Ghanaians are.  In fact, go to the North and see the type of polluted water people drink with their animals and you will regret the day you were born in Ghana.

During the recent celebration of the World Water Day, speakers after speakers hammered on the need to use water judiciously but sadly that is the end of the story. A range of proposals, old and new are coming to the fore, but how realistic are they, considering the behaviours of Ghanaians toward water management?  The hullabaloo that followed the government’s decision to privatise water some years ago seems to have died all too soon while we still grabble with water shortages in this country.

Unlike what is prevailing in some countries where access to adequate and unpolluted water is increasingly being viewed as a basic human right, Ghana seems indifferent to the issue. We as a people have closed our eyes to this serious problem because for now we can get water to drink. We have not sat down to look around us and compare ourselves to countries like, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali and other sub-saharan countries. These countries did not wake up one day to find that there was not enough water for them and their flocks. They were also having forests and wetlands until nature decided to punish them for one reason or the other.

Water, not oil, is the most precious fluid in our lives, the substance from which all life on the earth has sprung and continuous to depend. If we run short of oil and other foils fuels, we can use alternative energy. If we have no clean, drinkable water, we are doomed. The theme for this year’s World Water Day, ‘Water for Life’ is, therefore, quite appreciated and that is why we must heed the wakeup call by scientists to take the issue of water management seriously.

The government, NGOs and local communities must address this problem as a top priority. There are many tools for doing so and the economic costs are not high compared to the costs of failing to meet these needs. Hunger and thirst are linked to political instability and low rates of economic growth.

Look at what is happening to our folks in the northern region where guinea worms have refused to go after many years of fighting the disease? Can you imagine the man/hours lost due to inability of those attacked by the disease to work all these years? If you are living in a big city and you have access to portable water, do not think your fellow Ghanaians living in the villages have similar access. In our villages, people drink from streams which is unacceptable in this 21st century. These poor folks have no alternative but to drink this unwholesome water together with their animals. Oh, water, water everywhere but not a single clean drop to drink!

Today, twenty years after the publication of this piece, the issue of polluted water bodies and destruction of our forests have become a headache.  We have reached a point where almost all our water bodies have turned to condensed but sugarless milk. Fishes in our rivers are dead and farmers who used to fetch water from the rivers and stream along the way to their farms have turned to the buying of sachet waters to drink in their farms when they feel thirsty.

Yours sincerely is married to a Kyebi royal.  She doesn’t hesitate to always boast that she is “Akyemkwaa a onom Biremu” (Akyem royal who drinks from the Birim River) One day two of us were driving to Accra and when we reached Anyinam, I stopped near the Birim River and asked her if “this was the Birim she drunk as a girl growing up at Asikam?” She flew up in anger and shouted at me to drive on because she was so angry and would not like to even look at the polluted water. She never talked till we reached Accra. Anytime I call her “Akyemkwaa a onom Biremu” she becomes highly offended.

If all chiefs in Ghana, particularly those in the galamsey operation areas act like the great Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the issue of galamsey would have minimised.  The Otumfuo has destooled about four chiefs for allowing galamseyers to destroy their river bodies.  The multimillion dollar question is, ‘Who owns the land?’

A small-scale miner had all his necessary documents to mine gold at Mampong in the Ashanti Region. When the guy presented his documents to the Mamponghene to seek his blessing before he started operation, the Mamponghene asked him to go back to Accra and give the documents to whosoever issued them to him because he will not allow any gold to be prospected in his jurisdiction.  The man went and never returned.

Let all chiefs try this and see.  The Mamponghene proved to the guy that even though authorities in Accra gave him the permit, the land belongs to him, the occupant of the Silver Stool, so he will not allow any Jupiter to step on the land to mine gold. Simplista!!!  Who say man no dey? Full stop.

By Eric Bawah

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