Our Vital element: Water.

Have you ever thought what would you do if you didn’t have water for a day? Have you ever analyzed how many litters of water do you consume per day? And how many of them do you waste?

Along the history, the apparent abundance of water in the world has provoked that man thought it was an endless good. It was also cheaper than now, even in most of the regions, water was for free. This situation, beyond any doubt, drove man to squander it, originating, without noticing, the current water scarcity, million people live today with. Among the Millennium Development Goals, (MDGs), signed in the year 2000, number 7 is focused on guaranteeing the environmental sustainability and one of its most important sections, is the one about the sustainable access to safe drinking water. The Government leaders agreed to reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities, for the year 2015.

According to the UNICEF’s Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation, the percentage The percentage of people worldwide who have access to an improved water supply has risen from 78% in 1990 to 83% in 2004. Some 1'228 million more people have been served during these 14 years (772 million in urban and 456 million in rural areas), however, there is a long way to look over yet… more than 2.400 millions of people don’t have access to safe drinking water, and due to that, about 2 millions of boys and girls die per year (6.000 per day) by curable or preventable infections spread by dirty water or unsuitable sanitation facilities.

But the problem doesn’t finish there, when signing the MDGs, the authorities didn’t create the necessary measures to avoid the water monopoly, therefore, the conflict of the privatization of the water sources, seems to be one of the most serious of this starting century. Despite only the 5% of safe drinking water in the world is in private hands, the annual profits that these enterprises get, are more than the double of the petroleum industry’s profits. And as the planet’s population growing is foreseen in 9.000 millions of inhabitants for the year 2025, it is not difficult to imagine the mechanism that is on the way, for the water market.

Facing this panorama, as citizens of the world, maybe we belong to the group that has unlimited access to water daily; maybe we belong to the group that is on short rations of water, or maybe we are suffering water scarcity. Whatever our situation is, everybody has a responsibility, and ours, as Christians and members of VMY, is bigger, because we know that the natural resources are a blessing that God has placed at our disposal. Therefore, I invite you today to reflect on these questions:

 Am I responsible in the use of the water God has put at my disposal?

Do I consider the repercussions of my way of consuming it?

In my community, do all the people have access to safe drinking water?

Could my VMY group work in a project for my community’s population to have access to this vital element?

We want to listen to your opinion, comments or testimonies, contact us: www.secretariadojmv.org

E-mail us:secinterjmv@telefonica.net / english_jmv@telefonica.net

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