If we ask a creature what water is for, the first thing it will probably answer is: to drink. Clear and flat. On the other hand, if we direct the question to an adult, the answer would be full of nuances and new uses: to water, cook, fill swimming pools or to run some businesses. As we get older, we lose sight of the fact that the primary use of water is to sustain life, both for people and for nature. This causes us to often forget that it is a human right and that it can be misused in social matters. An example is what is happening this last year in the Gaza Strip. According to United Nations rapporteurs, water in the siege of Gaza has become a weapon. Its use is to wage war.
During the year that the siege has been active, Israel has boycotted Palestine’s water infrastructure and contaminated water sources. To give us an idea, it is calculated that a person needs an average of 100 liters of water per day to live and 15 liters to survive in a conflict – the so-called emergency dose. Currently, the average figure that reaches Gaza is 4.7 liters per person per day; still lower than the dose required for survival. For Israel it is a war strategy: almost 2 million cases of diseases are caused by this lack of drinking water and sanitation, as Oxfam has announced in recent weeks.
Clearly, this situation puts the population of Gaza in an even more vulnerable position and has impacts on the environment in which they live. The only natural source of fresh water in Gaza is the coastal aquifer and, to quench the great thirst, people are trying to extract every last drop. Pedro Arrojo, United Nations rapporteur and founder of the New Water Culture Foundation, provided the data a couple of weeks ago in a press conference: a population of 2.3 million people has been forced to pump three times more water of the aquifer than it receives through natural replenishment. The consequences of this exploitation are similar to a fish biting its tail, because a depleted aquifer takes a long time to recharge and means the loss of drinking water for even more years. Furthermore, in the specific case of Gaza, the aquifer is very close to the sea, which makes it easier for it to receive the intrusion of seawater if it is damaged, and it is shallow, so salinization also affects the soils. As the peasantry knows well, it will not be possible to cultivate crops in salty land for decades.
Another point that we tend to forget is that water, in addition to being a human right, is a common good. If some people can use water over others, it is because the society that lives in the same hydrographic basins of the rivers does not have the power or right to decide about them. And this has to change. We need to create water governance processes that are collaborative, fair and equitable and that can maintain the health of the common source; It is a major challenge that we share both in our country and in other peoples. Avoiding these abuses of power in the use of water is a titanic task already in times of peace, so in times of war it is impossible, but it still plays a very important role in managing the tensions and conflicts that appear with water scarcity. and it is essential to recover the socioeconomic balance in a territory once the war is over. Shared governance reminds us that water belongs to everyone and returns us to the intrinsic idea of creatures: the first use of water is to give life. Using it as a weapon is a war crime.
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