The right to water is a basic human right. “A person can survive only three to five days without water, in some cases people have survived for an average of one week,” says thewaterpage.com. “Once the body is deprived of fluids the cells and organs in the body begin to deteriorate. The presence of water in the body could mean the difference between life and death.”
Studies have shown that Filipinos consume about 310 to 507 million cubic meters of water each day. “A household of five needs at least 120 liters per days to meet basic needs – for drinking, food preparation, cooking and cleaning up, washing and personal hygiene, laundry, house cleaning,” wrote David Satterthwaite and Gordon McGranahan in their collaborative report published in the State of the World a few years back.
Life, as we know it, cannot exist without water. As Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Hungarian biochemist and Nobel Prize winner for medicine, puts it: “Water is life’s mater and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water.”
That’s why when you are thirsty, drink water. “Getting enough water every day is important for your health,” the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reminds. “Healthy people meet their fluid needs by drinking when thirsty and drinking with meals. Most of your fluid needs are met through the water and beverages you drink.”
There are other sources of water aside from the obvious glass of water. “You can also get this critical nutrient from food,” says the website, www.universalclass. com. “Vegetables like lettuce, cucumber, tomato, sugar snap peas, and celery have a very high-water content, which also makes them very low in calories but still high in nutrient value. Fruits like oranges, pineapples, strawberries, and others, also have high water content. Broth based soups, milk, and juices do contain a high percentage of water.”
But how much water should you drink? “Enough to pass two quarts of urine a day,” says Dr. Peter D. Fugelso, medical director of the Kidney Stone Department at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in California. “If you’ve been working out in the garden all day under the hot sun, that could mean you’ll need to drink two gallons,” he adds. “It’s the amount of urine that matters.”
A bit of caution: don’t overdrink water. In an article which appeared in “Daily Mail,” Sophie Borland wrote that drinking too much water “can be bad for your health.” She said that British actor Anthony Andrews, who starred in the ITV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, was hit by the illness after drinking too much water during rehearsals for a West End role in 2003.
Borland cited a study done by Glasgow-based GP Margaret McCartney which showed that drinking when not thirsty “can impair concentration, rather than boost it.”
Writing in the British Medical Journal, Dr. McCartney also pointed out that “drinking excessive amounts can also lead to loss of sleep as people have to get up in the night to go to the toilet, and other studies show it can even cause kidney damage, instead of preventing it.”
Water is not only for drinking. In the Philippines, water is the single most important component for sustainable rice production, especially in the traditional rice growing areas. Current rice production systems consume a high amount of water. It takes about 3,000 liters of water to produce one kilogram of rice, reports the Laguna-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).
In his book, Food Revolution, author John Robbins said that 23 gallons of water is needed to produce one pound of lettuce, 23 gallons for one pound of tomatoes, 24 gallons for one pound of potatoes, 25 gallons for one pound of wheat, 33 gallons for one pound of carrots, and 49 gallons for one pound of apples.
Meat production also consumes a lot of water. “Agriculture uses about 70% of the world’s available freshwater, and one third of that is used to grow the grain fed to livestock,” reports the Worldwatch Institute.
Beef, the meat used in most fastfood outlets, is by far the most water-intensive of all meats. “The more than 15,000 liters of water used per kilogram is far more than is required by a number of staple foods, such as eggs (3,300 liters per kilogram), milk (1,000 liters), or potatoes (255 liters).”
The US Department of Commerce 1992 Census of Agriculture’s Farm and Ranch Irrigation Survey, published in 1994, reported that one pound of pork needs at least 1,630 gallons of water to produce but in contrast one pound of beef requires 5,214 gallons of water.
“Producing beef is much more resource-intensive than producing pork or chicken, requiring roughly three to five times as much land to generate the same amount of protein,” the Worldwatch Institute points out. “Beef production alone uses about three fifths of global farmland but yields less than 5% of the world’s protein.”
Around the world, more than 40% of wheat, rye, oats, and corn production is fed to animals, along with 250 million tons of soybeans and other oilseeds. “Feeding grain to livestock improves their fertility and growth, but it sets up a de facto competition for food between animals and people,” the Worldwatch Institute says.
So far, how much water have you used since you were born?
If you can’t guess, you’re not alone. Your Water Footprint, authored by Stephen Leahy, gives some ideas. For instance, to produce one smartphone requires 910 liters – or 240 gallons – of water.
“Cellphones and smartphones use water throughout their production process, from creating the microchips to mining the metals used in the batteries to polishing the silica glass used in their touch screens,” the book informs. “In total, each phone requires 910 liters of water to manufacture.”
It has been predicted that the number of activated cellphones is soon expected to exceed the world’s population. “To manufacture these phones will require 6.7 trillion liters (1.8 trillion gallons) of water, much of it blue and grey,” Leahy said.
Let’s talk about soft drinks. One 500-milliliter (17-ounce) bottle of soft drink requires 175 liters (46 gallons) of water. Soft drink is almost entirely water so a half-liter bottle effectively contains a half-liter of water.
“That’s the direct water input,” pointed out Leahy, an independent journalist for over 20 years who has reported on environmental issues from dozens of countries. “But soft drink is not just water in a bottle. When you include the production of all the flavoring ingredients (the highest consumptive factor), the manufacturing and supply chain, each bottle requires about 175 liters.”
A water footprint, as Leahy defined it, is the amount of water ‘consumed’ to make, grow or produce something. “I use the word consumed to make it clear this is water that can no longer be used for anything else,” he said.
Leahy explained it further in these words: “The water footprint of 500 ml of bottled water is 5.5 liters: 0.5 for the water in the bottle and another five contaminated in the process of making the plastic bottle from oil. The five liters consumed in making the bottle are as real water as the 500 ml you might drink but hardly anyone in business or government accounts for it.”
While water is touted to be life itself, it also takes lives. The notion that water can carry disease first occurred to the ancient Greeks. The physician Hippocrates, the ancient innovator of medical ethics, advised that polluted water be boiled or filtered before being consumed.
“As many as 76 million people – mainly children – will die from preventable, water-related diseases by 2020 even if current United Nations goals are reached,” deplored Dr. Peter H. Gleick, director of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimated some nine million people, mostly children, die annually from water-borne diseases. “The toll is equal to 75 large airline crashes daily,” said an UN official.
Installing a flush toilet in the home increases a newborn child’s chances of celebrating a first birthday by 59%, studies show. In the Philippines, out of every 1,000 children, 27 never make it to their first birthday.
“An estimated 50% of typhoid cases (in the Philippines) are due to water pollution, sanitation conditions and hygiene practices,” a World Bank report states. “Outbreaks are commonly associated with contaminated water supply systems.”
Something must be done. “All of these diseases are associated with our failure to provide clean water,” Dr. Gleick commented. “I think it’s terribly bleak, especially because we know what needs to be done to prevent these deaths. We’re doing some of it, but the efforts that are being made are not aggressive enough.”
Today’s “crisis in water and sanitation is – above all – a crisis of the poor,” observed the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) study, “Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Water Crisis.”
In Tawi-Tawi province, 82 out of every 100 residents lack safe water. In Bataan, the number of residents exposed to unsafe water is a low 3, while it is at 39 in Capiz.
In the past, water was considered an infinite resource. This thinking was exemplified by Adam Smith who pointed out in his classic work – The Wealth of Nations – that unlimited supply of fresh water explained why it cost nothing, even though it was vital to all life.
Earth is a water world as water covers 71% of the world’s total surface. This represents a volume of 1,400 million cubic kilometers, according to United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). About 97.5% is too salty to be consumed or used for industrial or agricultural purposes. Fresh water represents 2.5% of the water total.
“Unlike copper, oil, and most other commodities, fresh water is not a resource that acquires value only when it is extracted and put to human use,” noted Sandra Postel and Amy Vickers, authors of Handbook of Water Use and Conservation: Homes, Landscapes, Businesses, Industries, Farms.
“Most fundamentally, fresh water is a life support. When we pump or divert water to meet human demands, we tap into a living system that myriad other species depend on for their survival and that performs valuable services for the human economy,” they added.
