The aral sea

The Aral Sea is a landlocked endorheic basin in central asia. It located near Kazakhstan in the north and Uzbekistan in the south.

There are now three lakes in the Aral Basin: the north Aral sea and the eastern and western basins of the south Aral sea.
The problem of the sea of Aral Sea is the misappropriation of the 2 rivers which feed it. This is Russian which diverted these rivers to irrigate cotton fields. By 1960, between 20 and 60 cubic kilometers of water were going each year to the land instead of the sea.

Because of this or that the feeding of the sea in stopped causing the disappeared of this one. The sea had shrunk to 25% of its original surface area. The fall of the quantity of water in the sea in entrained a number mattering from problems.
The first is a visible symptom, the villages of fishers meets far from the coast consequently.
The second problem is an increase of the saltiness drawing away the death of numerous species of fish; nearly fivefold increase in salinity had killed most of its natural flora and fauna.
For economic reasons, have can see how people are able to putting in difficult the populations and destroying an old ecosystem of thousand years.

Possible solutions:
Many different solutions to the different problems have been suggested over the years, ranging in feasibility and cost, including the following:

• Improving the quality of irrigation canals;


• Installing desalination plants;


• Charging farmers to use the water from the rivers;


• Using alternative cotton species that require less water;


• Using fewer chemicals on the cotton;


• Installing dams to fill the Aral Sea;


• Redirecting water from the Volga, Ob and Irtysh rivers. This would restore the Aral Sea to its former size in 20–30 years at a cost of US$30–50 billion;


• Pump and dilute sea water into the Aral Sea from the Caspian sea via pipeline.
  

Privatisation = Impoverishment ?

At this time Marocco has a great lack of water. Precipitations are irregular on account of the global warming. Besides this, 85% of the available ressources are used for agricultural exportation.In addition, there is a huge gap betwenn the cities and the left over rural environnement.

Since a few years, many private firms are trying to put their hands on the water ressources, involving in many cases the increase of the water prices. Today more and more people are protesting against it.

Counting 3500 inhabitants, Ben S’mim village localized at 200km from Rabat has been an interesting target for the " Euro-Africaine des eaux ", a global water company, in 1999 : The village’s source, wich permits -for free- to irriguate the fields and to water the livestocks could be used by the firm to produce every year 100 million litres of water…in bottles that you have to pay. The government accepted, and the workings started in 2005.

In 2006, the population protests against the project but the firm, with the police’s help manages to start the work : people are arrested. The village is encircled during 2 months with the interdiction to go in or out of the village.The electricity is cutted every night during the Ramadan to prevent people from gathering. The outcome : several miscarriage because of the imposibility to go to an hospital, and many people injured.

Today, the case of Ben S’mim, is defended by many NGOs and associations, and it looks like things are slowly changing : the project wich has now a mediatic importance, might stop in a few months.

Nevertheless, Ben S’mim is an example among many other villages, villages wich are silently sinking into impoverishement on account of the privatisation.

« The one who rules water rules China »

This proverb can help us to understand the chinese’s ambition to realise huge hydrologics projects.
Let’s talk about one : the Three Gorges Dam on the Yang tse river. This dam is the biggest of the world : 2309m long and 185m tall. His reservoir is 660km long, and it began to store water on June 1, 2003. The construction was finished in 2009. It has cost 13 billion dollars. The objectives : supply 10% of the Chinese electricity.
This dam seems to be benefic for Chinese developpement, but a project like that is not realizable without sacrifices.

First, the reservoir has inundated a lot of cultural and patrimonial wealths, such as 44 archaelogical sites among the most legendary of China.

Secondly, 2 million people had to move far away of their homes and jobs. 8 towns and 4500 villages have been inundated, as well as 657 firms and 28753 ha of fields. Among this people, 60% were farmers. They were relodged in the mountains, where lands are poor and the traditional citrus fruit cultivation impossible. What is more, a lot of people were relodged to Guangxi province, wich has the most important national unemployment rate at the present time. Therefore, a lot of people can’t find a job in their new town.
One third of the dam’s budget was consecrated to these displacements, but provided for 1,3 million persons.

Finally, the Three Gorges zone has a wealthy biodiversity, with thousands animals and plants speces, wich 55 are protected. Unfortunately, the dam draws a lot of pollution. The water has recovered many polluted zone (such as tombs, coalmines, dumps…) and many chemical products are now stagnating in the reservoir. Moreover, the sediment’s accumulation and the water’s wheight in the reservoir could bring about fissures on the dam, and at the very worst a collapse.

What is more, many species are threatened by the water’s stagnation : the Yang tse dolphin (the Baiji) disapeared in 2008 as many other species.

This project is a national pride occasion, but the social cost, environemental and cultural is considerable. Only time will tell us if these sacrifices were legitimate.

The frightening water report

Billion people are dying because of a lack of drinkable water, whereas many private firms (majoritarly French, English and American) are realising several billion euros benefits in selling drinkable water.

We could also speak about the increasing degradation of the hydric resources on Earth: Many lakes are narrowing and vanishing, rivers are dying (Niger for example) and others do not supply enough water to the sea (Colorado river, Yang tse…).The hydric layers resources in many countries have dramatically decreased, and what is more, a lot of hydric resources have been so polluted that they are unusable today (80% of the French surface water resources are contaminated). Eventually, the majority of the ice sheets (representing the most important part of the freshwater reserves) are melting.

This frightening report as already started to affect billion people lives. But the experts are thinking that in 30 or 40 years, the “waterless disease” could provoke the death of dozen million people every year.

Our society has to find a way to resolve one the biggest problem ever: find enough wholesome water for every people on Earth.

Water emergency

Water is at the convergence of many topics in many ways:
Economics, socials, territories, environment.

Water is also a precious resource, but a threatened one, and it management can lead to conflicts.

The health of 2,8 billion people is in danger and their life too because there is a lack of latrines. They don’t have appropriated systems to treat the human excrements so they can’t live whit dignity.

Developped countries spend annually billions euros for drinkable water in their WC, that represent one third of the water consumption for one person per day, for a 600 L consumption per person and per day in the USA, 400 in UK, 310 in France but 130 in Germany and 120 in Sweden.

The worldwide economy system assert that it is impossible to produce the latrines that half of the world population needs.Why? because it cost around 15 or 20 billion euros, that is the equivalent of 5 days of worlwide military expense.

But the financial resources do exist: a few month ago, the Australian bank Maquarie spent 14 billion euros to buy one of the most important private water enterprise, Thames Water. The aim? Make a lot of money with the distribution of drinkable water….