Water is an essential part of the human experience. We are made of water. We use water to drink. We use water to clean. We use water to cook. We use water to bathe. In fact, the origins of life on earth stem from the water itself. Water is essential for life on earth, however, it is being jeopardized by the huge amounts of pollution that humans are creating. Companies and industries are particularly bad for producing waste that ends up in our water. This is a serious threat to human health. Unbelievably “Unsafe water kills more people each year than war and all other forms of violence combined” (Denchak). While citizens of developed countries may not think twice about the water that they drink, and how they get it, citizens of developing countries are still at risk of being poisoned by unhealthy water. Many people believe that water is a basic human right. In my opinion, the fact that Americans use 5 times more than the global average is pretty sad. Access to water is a human rights issue as well. Another huge problem is that the vast majority of water on earth is not drinkable. Most of the water on earth is saltwater that cannot be used as a drinking source for humans and “Less than 1 percent of the earth’s fresh water is actually accessible to us”. This means that the amount of freshwater that we have as a resource for the almost 8 billion people here on earth is very limited. While the human population continues to grow, eventually it will get to the point where there simply is not enough water for everyone on earth. This is a very depressing thought to me. I believe that developed counties have a responsibility to help provide developing countries with access to water. If the United States wants to be a great country, it must act like one.
Works Cited:
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/water-pollution-everything-you-need-know
I think you raise a great point in that for the US to be a “great country, it must act like one.” Additionally, the info graphics in the first hotlink are astonishing when reflecting on the reality that 1 in 9 people don’t have access to clean water and that levels of water concentrations have significantly decreased in Northern Asian countries and parts of South America.
It’s so horrible to think of all the people who don’t have access to safe, clean water. In my blog post, I wrote about how much water is wasted by Americans doing daily/weekly tasks, and was shocked by how much water we could be saving. What you wrote about adds the sad reality that some people aren’t even given clean water, never the less the privilege to waste it.
Water is definitely something all developed nations but the United States in particular take for granted. Access to safe water is just seemingly understood as a universal right because we have it in America and many people don’t even realize just how difficult it can be for people in other countries to get access to safe water.
Water is essential to life, it’s part of who we are and it’s part of the earth itself. it’s ethnocentric to only be thinking about how our actions affect ourselves and not other people around the world. One way of environmental justice is to care about the people who suffered in the post-colonisation world.