Four Books Explore Humans’ Relationship With Water

By CORNELIA DEAN
Published: October 7, 2013

Earth, “the blue planet,” has a lot of water. Most of the planet’s surface is covered with it. But less than 5 percent of that water is fresh, and much of that is locked up in ice sheets or inconveniently far underground. And it is not always most abundant where it is most needed.

As a result, we are drawing on underground aquifers faster than they can recharge. And the water we have is often polluted by sewage, industrial waste, parasites and other contaminants that can make “natural” water unsafe to drink.

In short, as James Salzman puts it in “Drinking Water,” one of four new books that dive into our species’ relationship with water, clean supplies have always been the exception, not the norm. As recently as 1900, he writes, 1 in 70 Americans died of a waterborne disease before age 70.

Though he ranges widely, Mr. Salzman, who teaches law and environmental studies at Duke, focuses on what one might call social justice. Access to water may be viscerally regarded as a “right,” but he points out that the best way to ensure a reliable supply of pure water, especially in poor regions, is often to privatize it.

Water management has been critical to economic, social and cultural development for thousands of years, Steven Mithen tells us in “Thirst.” An archaeologist at the University of Reading in England, Dr. Mithen covers a vast portion of the ancient world: water storage in ancient Sumeria, the terra cotta pipes of classical Athens and the aqueducts of Rome, the “hydraulic city” of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the water-allocation policies of the Maya.

His tone is academic and at times highly technical, but he builds to a striking conclusion. Though we may think that the rise of complex social and economic networks enabled ancient cultures to manage their water, the reverse may well be true: only when a society had reliable access to water could it turn itself into an economic or cultural power.

If some ancient empires acquired their water by conquest, so, in its way, did a much later empire: New York City. In “Empire of Water,” David Soll describes how the city transformed its notoriously unsanitary water system in the early 20th century by buying up watersheds in the Catskill Mountains and building a large network of reservoirs, pipes, tanks, sampling stations and other devices that delivers a billion gallons a day of excellent water into the city’s homes and businesses.

For Dr. Soll, a historian who focuses on water issues in his work at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, this past is fraught with political deal making, hubris, unintended consequences and government overreach. But in the end, “the willingness of Catskill residents and city officials to embark on the world’s most expensive and ambitious watershed management program after almost a century of bitter conflict” offers hope that the goals of sensible water management and environmental progress “are not as elusive as they may seem.” As for waste, a first step in avoiding it is to recognize how much water we use each day, counting not just water for flushing, bathing, washing and watering the lawn, but also the water use embedded in the food we eat, the products we buy and the electricity that powers our lives.

How much is that? A lot, according to Wendy J. Pabich’s “Taking On Water.”

Dr. Pabich, an environmental scientist and water activist who lives in a dry region of Idaho, says the average American uses 100 times as much water as, say, the typical Mozambican — a level of waste brought home to her when she realized she and her husband were using thousands of gallons each month to irrigate their garden.

Her book recounts their effort to cut back their water habit, by a lot. Along the way, she discovers how much water is lost to leakage in the United States — a trillion gallons a year — and how low its price is related to its value and growing scarcity.

At times Dr. Pabich’s environmental correctness can be wearying. And her suggestions for reducing water use are mostly self-evident: fix leaks, install low-flow toilets and water-miser washers, turn off the shower while you lather, and so on.

But she also supplies a chart detailing the “water footprint” of various commodities. For example, it takes 22.8 gallons of water to produce, package and ship a single egg. A pound of beef requires 183 gallons. By contrast, strawberries come in at 3.6 gallons per cup, and it takes only 1.3 gallons of water to produce a tomato.

The results of her experiment are both gratifying and alarming. She and her husband did cut their water use in half, but that took them only to the level that residents of places like Japan or Poland routinely achieve.

Perhaps, she and others write, people would think more about water if it were priced differently. Cheap water may reflect a widespread view that access to clean water is a natural right that everyone, rich or poor, should enjoy.

Is that the approach most likely to bring clean water to the most people? Maybe not. “Clean water is no longer a free gift of nature,” Dr. Soll writes. It is “a shared resource that can be preserved only through judicious investments and active engagement.”

How To Eat An Egg In A Rebounding Rwanda

By Patricia Crisafulli & Andrea Redmond

In a rural preschool at Rugarama in northern Rwanda, some two hours north of the capital city of Kigali, 90 or so three- to six-year-olds sit patiently on a grassy patch outside a crumbling one-room schoolhouse with only gaps where windows and the door should be. Having sung, prayed, counted, and chanted the days of the week and months of the year in their native Kinyarwanda and English (fluency in which is a national education goal), the children wait for the highlight of the day: a hard-boiled egg.

In a rural preschool at Rugarama in northern Rwanda, some two hours north of the capital city of Kigali, 90 or so three- to six-year-olds sit patiently on a grassy patch outside a crumbling one-room schoolhouse with only gaps where windows and the door should be. Having sung, prayed, counted, and chanted the days of the week and months of the year in their native Kinyarwanda and English (fluency in which is a national education goal), the children wait for the highlight of the day: a hard-boiled egg.

Firm taps of the shells against a ridge of rock produce a crack. Then the peeling begins. Some children take a bite as soon as the top is uncovered and then continue removing the rest of the shell. Others wait until the egg fully emerges. No one gobbles or grabs. Older children help younger ones. One little girl nibbles the white first and then savors the round ball of cooked yolk.

The eggs are no mere mid-morning snack. They provide an infusion of protein at a critical juncture in child development, particularly for these needy rural children. Even when there are sufficient calories in their diet, protein is often deficient, which can impair body and brain development. Eggs are a perfectly portable protein source with ample shelf-life, even at room temperature, and contain the right balance of amino acids for human consumption.

Distribution of eggs to rural Rwandan preschoolers in the country’s Northern Province is the work of a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization (NGO) called One Egg, working with Rwandan and stateside partners. On the ground in Rwanda, One Egg collaborates with the Anglican Shyira Diocese, which currently operates 217 child development centers, with plans to expand to 325. Of the 217, 15 of these preschools currently receive eggs—a number One Egg hopes will grow steadily through stateside donor support.

The eggs are procured by One Egg from a poultry farm outside Musanze, the largest city in the Northern Province, which is operated by Ikiraro Investments, a Rwandan corporation with backing from American social entrepreneur Tom Phillips, as well as technical support from poultry giant Tyson Foods TSN -0.07% and its Cobb-Vantress research and technology arm.

Significantly, there is no government money here and no foreign aid. Instead, there is the transfer of technology, know-how, and best practices at the poultry farm. The eggs, therefore, reflect the importance of eschewing traditional aid and handouts in favor of empowering partnerships that pursue good works aligned with the Rwandan government’s priorities for development, especially at the lowest socioeconomic tier. As we wrote in our book, Rwanda, Inc., the emphasis is on development that is pro-poor, as evidenced in the 1 million Rwandans raised from poverty between 2006 and 2011.

Admittedly, progress in Rwanda, which is in the midst of a strong comeback since the 1994 genocide—with milestones such as 8% GDP growth, universal health care, 12 years of compulsory education, and the expectation that it will meet virtually all its United Nations Millennium Development Goals by 2015—starts at square one with incremental gains. The same can be said for the Shyira Diocese’s child development centers, where there is far more need than the means to deliver eggs. A harsh example is at Mugera on the Ugandan border where a mud-brick schoolhouse with a dirt floor is accessible only by a narrow rutted track that could never be called a road. There, children recite the same songs, prayers, and vocabulary lessons as at Rugarama, but there is no egg feast at the end.

As for those without egg deliveries as yet, the centers themselves, no matter how humble, are at least a start toward attaining the diocese’s four-fold goals, as explained by Bishop Laurent Mbanda: child security, with a safe environment for young children whose mothers work the fields; education, including an introduction to basic English; spiritual development; and nutrition.

Although the need is great, it cannot overshadow what is happening now: the diets of 1,500 rural preschoolers are supplemented with protein. Even anecdotally, children who receive the eggs show signs of physical and cognitive gains.

The intention is strong and the partners are committed to tackle poverty, nutrition, and child development issues among Rwanda’s poor—with more brown-shelled eggs, hard boiled over a wood fire at a rural preschool, resting in the palm of a child’s hand.

As seen on bteam.org:

The B Team is a not-for-profit initiative that has been formed by a group of global business leaders to create a future where the purpose of business is to be a driving force for social, environmental and economic benefit.

To learn more about The B Team, check out this article by Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/people-planet-profit-intr_b_3432011.html.

]]> https://dsmagency.com/?feed=rss2&p=1732 0 https://dsmagency.com/?p=1661 https://dsmagency.com/?p=1661#comments Fri, 10 May 2013 13:00:23 +0000 http://dsmagency.com/?p=1661 The Markets Endorse Rwanda's Path To Economic Growth By Andrea Redmond & Patricia Crisafulli

President Paul Kagame of Rwanda at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption]

The Markets Endorse Rwanda’s Path To Economic Growth

By Andrea Redmond & Patricia Crisafulli

President Paul Kagame of Rwanda at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Amid the rhetoric, pro and con, around Rwanda, the impartial voice of the marketplace has spoken, with a ringing endorsement of its economic turnaround and prospects for continued growth.

Last week, Rwanda’s debut on the global bond market raised $400 million with an offering that was heavily over-subscribed by nearly eight times. Final yield on the 10-year bonds of 6.875% was less than reported expectations in the low-7% area, due to strong buyer interest. Proceeds will go to repayment of bank loans, infrastructure such as a hydropower project, expansion of the national airline RwandAir, and the completion of a convention center in the capital of Kigali.

The successful bond issue triggered a flurry of enthusiastic postings on Twitter from Rwandan government officials (very savvy users of social media). Finance Minister Claver Gatete hailed a “great day for Rwanda after the investors have shown confidence in our economy….” President Paul Kagame tweeted his congratulations to those who worked to bring the bond offering to a successful conclusion, adding “Let’s continue forward.”

Beyond Rwanda’s enthusiasm, what speaks even more loudly is the oversubscription for these bonds. Yes, there is interest these days in higher yields and geographic diversification. But specific to Rwanda, the success of this offering shows widespread recognition that what has happened to transform this country socially, economically, and politically is real and sustainable.

Rwanda truly is the ultimate turnaround. For the African nation, the comeback has been from the depths of human bankruptcy: genocide in 1994 in which 1 million people were killed in 100 days. Since then, the rebuilding has been impressive, with GDP growth that has risen by 7-8% annually in recent years. In 2012, GDP per capita grew to US$644, up from $593 a year before, according to Rwandan government figures.

Fitch, which affirmed a “B” rating on Rwanda, noted its “solid economic policies and a track record of structural reforms, macroeconomic stability, and low government debt” (23.3% of GDP in Rwanda, compared to the median of 43.5% among B-rated peers). Certainly, the country is not without its challenges; it is landlocked, which vastly increases transportation costs for imported goods, and more electrical generation capacity is needed. It is often clouded by geopolitics, most notably the morass of conflict in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Kagame draws criticism for being too tightly controlling, and human rights watchers charge the country suppresses political opposition and free speech.

Rwanda, post-genocide, remains a complex place. Having the perpetually turbulent DRC as a next-door neighbor (where some masterminds of the genocide have sought refuge) complicates matters. Yet the country, backed by the strength of its leaders, has clearly put itself on a path of revival and renewal based upon values such as one Rwanda for all Rwandans. It offers universal health care and 12 years of compulsory education for all children, has made significant gains in poverty reduction and food security, and seeks to foster private sector development though homegrown entrepreneurship and foreign direct investment.

As we wrote in Rwanda, Inc., the country is no Garden of Eden for business investment. The wheels turn slowly at times with extra bureaucracy—the unintended consequence of strictly enforced zero tolerance for corruption, a policy that is a huge positive for business—and there is need for human capital development, particularly at the middle tier. But Rwanda’s progress continues apace, which the marketplace, the impartial arbiter, recognizes.

Andrea Redmond and Patricia Crisafulli are co-authors of “Rwanda, Inc.: How a Devastated Nation Became an Economic Model for the Developing World” (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012).

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ADULT LITERACY DESERVES FOCUS

“My task, which I am trying to achieve by the power of the written word is to make you hear, to make you feel … to make you see.” Joseph Conrad, “Lord Jim”

The number of adults reading at an elementary-grade level has grown beyond the 50 percent level in the United States and continues to grow.

The ability to maximize our greatest potential as residents is founded upon each individual possessing basic literacy skills (the fundamentals of learning and communication). Yet we are ignoring the fact that 90 million adults living in America are challenged when reading the business language of the world: English. We can no longer accept the status quo that exists today in too many of our schools. More than 30 percent of our students drop out of school, and if you are African-American, it’s 50 percent, and if you’re Hispanic, it’s 54 percent.

Dr. G. Reid Lyon, former chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institute for Health, estimates 5 percent of children learn to read effortlessly, while another 20 to 30 percent learn to read with relative ease when exposed to any kind of instruction. However, for about 60 percent of students, learning to read is more challenging. Their success is tied directly to the efficacy of instruction. Of those, 20 to 30 percent find reading to be remarkably difficult; how those children are taught to read is critical to their success.

Teachers can’t teach what they haven’t been taught! All teachers participating in “continuing education” to maintain their credentials need to become familiar with the newest advances in teaching reading and how to implement evidence-based instruction into the classroom. Teacher colleges also need to be held accountable and participate in research to determine if what they are teaching our future teachers will work. All first- through sixth-grade teachers should be required to be certified reading specialists if we are to achieve our goal of every child learning to read.

At 48, I learned to read and have been a literacy advocate ever since. I am often tempted to give up on literacy issues, however, with immigration reform and early childhood education being current topics of discussion, it is time to include adult literacy programs in the discussion and legislation.

Today, it is as important to teach adults how to read as it is to teach our children. Adults, two-thirds of whom are parents of school-age children, should be provided with the same opportunity to learn how to read as our children. We hear from schools all the time that they can’t do it alone. Parents that can’t read can’t teach their children how to read. “Together We Can” is more than a motto, it is reality. In other words, going to preschool may be important, but having literate parents is an even greater predictor of a child’s success in school. Adult-family literacy can’t be overlooked.

Literacy and illiteracy are not just words! They are a way of life… illiteracy is a way of life that is limiting and embarrassing. I have lived in our society as an adult not able to read and as one being able to read. If you have not walked the walk of a student or an adult who cannot read, then you may be taking for granted how many times you access the world via the written word.

The written word is the dominant language in the classroom and in the workplace. English is the business language of the world. In our relations with competing international businesses, our ability to collaborate and join together in a common goal is greatly enhanced if we can speak and read our language proficiently. A major, immediate, positive transformation occurs when someone learns to read, despite their challenges. Their self-esteem takes a giant step forward, making them better students, parents, employees, patients, consumers and citizens. For adults, it literally changes their whole outlook on life. It actually changes the way their brain processes.

During upcoming public forums on education all over the country, the opportunity for you to speak out in favor of literacy returning as a major issue should be presented. I urge everyone to take a stand on behalf of literacy and legislation that will promote a more equal educational opportunity for adults to read, as well as children.

Corcoran, a longtime Oceanside resident, is a nationally known literacy advocate and author. He serves on the San Diego Council on Literacy board.

On March 11, 2011, one of the largest earthquakes ever to hit Japan sent a tsunami deep into cities and towns along the coast of Tohoku, the northeastern region of Honshu, the country’s largest island. The wave killed 16,000 people and destroyed or damaged more than a million buildings.

I’m an American living an hour north of Tokyo in a city called Sano, and that quake is still in my bones. It sounded like wind approaching underground. The power went out and none of us knew until the next day the devastation that lay farther north. When we saw it on the news and recognized places we’d been, we had to help.

Helping after a natural disaster is not easy, however. Most relief organizations advise staying out of the way and just donating money. Those who’ve been in disaster zones around the world tell stories of people dumping piles of unsorted junk that nobody wants to pick through. Kindhearted supporters helping the wrong way like this make the situation worse, not better. Yet, there is a way for citizens to help directly by bringing gifts beyond the life support provided by governmental and non-governmental organizations. Small groups of volunteers can comfort survivors personally and give them hope.

Large relief operations necessarily focus on food, shelter, and medical care, and they’re good at it. In Japan, the military set up camps at breakneck speed. The Japanese Red Cross deployed thousands of doctors and nurses. Gymnasiums and other public spaces became shelters. After this phase, though, survivors ended up on mats on giant floors, surrounded by strangers, fed three times a day, checked off as having been looked after. Two days went by, then four, then a week, and still the survivors sat with only thoughts of their homes washed away, their jobs gone, their cars missing and, most of all, the people they’d never see again. Depression became the sharpest thorn in a survivor’s side.

To help, we started Socks for Japan to deliver socks with care letters from people around the world. We learned from reports of past disasters that people in shelters often request socks, and they were a perfect item for our volunteer group to manage. Socks are cheap, they don’t break or spoil, and everybody needs them. We focused on this simple care package, sorted into five categories for men, women, boys, girls, and babies. We would not create chaos by collecting many different kinds of clothing or other items. We checked with Japan’s postal service and shipping companies to be sure we wouldn’t cause trouble by receiving thousands of boxes of socks. They assured us that we would not.

We announced our project to the world, and the world stepped up. Those thousands of boxes arrived from the United States, Australia, Canada, and dozens of other nations including Malaysia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Peru, Qatar, Croatia, French Guiana, and Finland. Some boxes burst open to reveal 50 pairs of socks with colorful notes from children. One pair arrived alone in an envelope. The letters of encouragement helped our volunteers as much as they did survivors. In a time of sadness and fear, it boosted my spirit to hold boxes from home. Return labels from churches, Brownie troops, neighborhood coffee shops, small town light and power departments, Mrs. Wilson’s fourth grade class, and other mainstays of American culture poured in. Over 70 percent of donations came from the United States. I was so proud of my country.

Forty local volunteers sorted this precious cargo each night after work and on weekends, helped by 20 volunteers from overseas. We made two trips per week 200 miles north into the heart of the disaster zone, visiting shelter after shelter to hand-deliver each package. Community leaders heard about us and requested visits to their neediest people. We became experts at packing our gifts, 100 pairs and letters per clear storage bag, and knew how many thousands we could take in our van.

The result was smooth distribution of a basic item that people needed, with a letter that brightened their day. Survivors held our hands while telling their stories. They’d cry and say how badly they needed socks. Sometimes, they’d hold up a letter proudly to announce, “This came all the way from America!” We weren’t saving lives, but we were improving them.

In 35 trips, we delivered 160,000 pairs of socks with letters. Some went to big cities like Ishinomaki, where people lined up in front of Watanoha train station by the hundreds and waited patiently to receive a gift from our van. One time there, we ran out of socks before reaching the end of the line and worried for a moment that a riot would ensue. Instead, the next person after the last person to receive socks told us, “We understand. Just please come again.” We did, on our very next trip. Other socks went to fishing villages at the ends of roads scraped through tsunami mud, where our volunteers walked to old ladies on mats who lifted their heads to see who’d come for a visit. None of us will forget the transition of their faces from expressionless resolve to delight. “For me?” they’d ask. “You brought these for me?”

Some of the survivors wrote back to their donors, and friendships formed. Charmingly rough English made the letters more touching. One read, “Received a warm socks. I get happy tears. Japan still must work hard. Going to overcome the hardships together. Thank you very much.”

Citizen volunteer groups can help survivors by delivering the care of the world directly where it’s needed most. When they focus on one needed item and bundle it with love, they reach people in ways that large organizations do not. Creating in somebody the idea that their survival was a blessing, that they will find happiness again, is important. Basic necessities keep people alive, but compassion provides the joy of being alive.

Jason Kelly is a financial writer based in Sano, Japan. Socks for Japan trip reports and photos are permanently posted at socksforjapan.com.

Click the image below to view Jason Kelly’s speech about Socks for Japan:

Rwanda: A Stunning Turnaround On A Continent Marked By Broken Promises

2/12/2013

By Patricia Crisafulli and Andrea Redmond

At a recent gathering of business and political leaders in Kigali, President Paul Kagame, the charismatic yet controversial Rwandan leader, stated, “We have understood for a long time that you can’t cure poverty without democracy. The only cure is through business, entrepreneurship, and innovation.” His pro-business and free-market comments are the moral of the story of the “other Rwanda,” the one that has moved beyond what it is perhaps best known for—the 1994 genocide in which one million people were killed in 100 days. And, it contrasts with the current crossfire of accusations (vehemently denied by the Rwandan government) of alleged support to a rebel group in its chronically violent next-door neighbor, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Within Rwanda, another narrative continues to unfold, with a positive impact that could extend well beyond its borders: the slow, steady, and consistent promotion of entrepreneurship and private sector development, two powerful ingredients in the progress toward full democracy in this landlocked country of 11 million people.

According to the World Bank’s Doing Business 2013 report, Rwanda ranks 52 out of 185 on “ease of doing business” and 8 on “ease in starting a business.” It is the second most improved nation globally and the top improved in sub-Saharan Africa since 2005. Through safety and security, zero-tolerance for corruption, and a stated goal to eliminate foreign aid (currently about 40 percent of its budget), Rwanda has put itself on a trajectory toward greater self-sufficiency; the evidence is in the numbers—projected 7.8% GDP growth in 2013, making it the ninth fastest growing economy in the world.

Foreign direct investors include Visa Inc., with its year-old cashless banking and payment processing ventures, and ContourGlobal, a New York-based company installing technology to extract methane gas from the waters of Lake Kivu to generate electricity. Chinese construction, South African telephony, and soon an Israeli solar-power venture are but some of the multinational involvements. Carnegie Mellon’s new Rwandan campus offers a master of science degree in information technology, reflecting Rwanda’s vision of evolving into an IT-based economy.On a return trip to Rwanda last week, we saw ample evidence in Kigali: a new and fully-leased 20-story skyscraper, tower cranes that punctuate the skyline, and shiny metal roofs in rural areas that attest to growing household income. (Rwanda raised one million people out of poverty between 2006 and 2011.) Agricultural cooperatives improve efficiency and productivity. Coffee washing stations produce value-added “fully washed” coffee beans stripped of their outer hull and mucilage for export to the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

Yet most impressive are the more modest homegrown ventures: new boutique hotels, restaurants, small IT shops, printers, event planning, and tourism offerings. (In 2010 alone, 18,447 new businesses were registered in Rwanda.)  A young woman dressed in smart attire urged two visitors to come to her new shop, which sells upscale fabrics and offers custom tailoring. The nascent Rwanda Stock Exchange lists four stocks—two Rwandan and two cross-listings—along with a few bonds, and plans to expand from truncated open-outcry sessions (which with a handful of brokers and light volume are more murmur than roar) to an electronic platform.

While hardly the next Facebook or Google, this is the kind of entrepreneurship that’s needed in Rwanda, where the average age is just under 20. Twelve years of compulsory education, increased enrollment in institutions of higher learning, and more vocational training will produce a generation of workers who cannot possibly be employed by the government. On a continent in which power tends to coagulate at the top and rarely spreads to regional and local levels, Rwanda preaches a gospel of free enterprise and private sector job creation.

Rwanda is not without its challenges and criticisms; among them are human capital development, particularly at the mid-tier level, and bureaucracy and chronic delays that are the unintended consequences of the drive to prevent corruption. (Paralysis can set in when something should, legitimately, be expedited, out of fear of even the appearance of impropriety.) Politically, Rwanda needs further gains in free speech (critics charge it silences political opposition) and more freedom for local press that must professionalize.

But Rwanda has come very far, very fast, from the lowest level of human-induced catastrophe that left it morally, socially, politically, and financially bankrupt. Out of those ashes of the 1994 genocide, when the West did nothing to intervene, Rwanda learned not to depend long-term on the outside world for help (a lesson that should be heeded in Haiti, where despite billions in aid, virtually no material gains have been made).

As Rwanda receives help from the likes of the Clinton Foundation, Partners In Health, Tony Blair’s Africa Governance Initiative, and many others, its appetite is for knowledge and development of institutions, not hand-outs that come with someone else’s agenda attached.

If Rwanda does, indeed, develop entrepreneurship and free enterprise as tools to build a future of its own design, its success will provide a stunning example of “the ultimate turnaround” on a continent in which there have been far too many examples of broken promises and unrealized potential.

Patricia Crisafulli and Andrea Redmond are authors of Rwanda, Inc.: How a Devastated Nation Became an Economic Model for the Developing World (November 2012, Palgrave-Macmillan).

A Journalist’s Take on Rwanda’s More Hopeful Face

The New York Times‘ best-selling author Patricia Crisafulli tells us about post-genocidal Rwanda’s more hopeful face — and the country’s road to socioeconomic recovery on Chicago Tonight at 7:00 pm. Her new book, co-written with Andrea Redmond, is called Rwanda, Inc. Read an excerpt from the book and view a slideshow of photos.

The full article can be found here.

Just add H2O to shape humanity’s past, present and future

by James Salzman

In 2010 the United Nations passed a resolution declaiming that “safe and clean drinking water” was a universal human right. A noble sentiment but words that gurgle straight down the plughole since the UN also estimates that half the world’s population will live in “water scarce areas” by 2030. The point the well-hydrated delegates were trying to get across is that the liquid we have seen more than enough of recently is in fact scarce and getting scarcer.

James Salzman’s book is a look at this everyday commodity most of us take for granted and which proves, on further examination, to be far from unremarkable after all. Salzman is American so the majority of his examples come from that side of the Atlantic; nevertheless, there is more than enough floating about in this book to satisfy a thirst for detail.

What Salzman lays out is water’s role in shaping human history — as a cultural, social, political and economic resource. Springs and wells feature in all the world’s great religions; access to fresh water has always been equated with power; water provision is a political issue — a thirsty populace means a shaky regime; and water is big business, with Americans alone quaffing more than nine billion gallons of bottled water in 2011, some 312 bottles per person.

The author dips his toe into all these areas. The idea of paying for water, for example, was established in ancient Rome; it supplied its citizens with free water via its 11 aqueducts but charged a tax, the vectigal, for those who ran off pipes for private houses. The bottled water industry goes back to pilgrims who wanted to take away samples from holy sites such as St Maelrubha’s well on Loch Maree, famed for curing insanity, or those on North Uist that alleviate toothache. The reductio ad absurdum of bottled water supposedly being better for you than tap water means that in America, 1,500 bottles of water are now opened every second and there is even a mineral water for dogs — Woof Water.

The safety of water has been a perennial concern. The struggles against waterborne diseases such as typhoid and cholera may seem less urgent today but unsafe water remains the world’s greatest killer and even now 19 million Americans fall sick every year through drinking impure water; indeed it accounts for nine deaths in every 100 there. Post 9/11, there has been an increased awareness in the West of the vulnerability of water supplies to terrorist attack although, as Salzman points out, while poisoning a single glass is relatively easy, poisoning an entire reservoir would require tankers full of pollutants.

Meanwhile the search to source clean water ranges from desalination plants that turn salt water into fresh to “toilet to tap” schemes for recycling waste water. The astronauts on the International Space Station used one such filtration method to drink their own urine (“the taste is great” was the cheery message they beamed back to Earth). The problem of this solution and its “sewage sipper” adherents is largely one of perception. It is, nevertheless, one answer as is the greater use of non-potable or “grey” water for such domestic tasks as toilet flushing and clothes washing that currently account for nearly 50 per cent of our domestic consumption.

While Salzman’s book often has the tone of a lecture, it is brimful of these sorts of fascinating if not always useful facts. One of the most pertinent, regarding the fad for bottled water, being that Evian backwards spells “naive”.

Other reviews can be viewed at the links below:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-2264029/Mineral-water-dogs-We-barking-mad–DRINKING-WATER-A-HISTORY-BY-JAMES-SALZMAN.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/9793270/Fat-Chance-by-Robert-Lustig-and-Drinking-Water-by-James-Salzman-review.html

http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/books/salzman-examines-paucity-of-safe-drinking-water-in-the-world