Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
In today’s Big Story podcast, a recent report found that by 2030 demand for water will outstrip the world’s supply by 40 per cent. In the United States, the Colorado River and other major sources of water are drying up. The number of droughts worldwide is skyrocketing. And Canada has a lot of water that other nations will someday soon not just want but badly need. Does this mean that wars over water are inevitable? Maybe not.
The world is going to have huge difficulty coping with the crises of the 21st century. Covid-19 has already shown that. More frequent future pandemics, the looming climate catastrophe, environmental collapse, the ongoing Sixth Mass Extinction with increasingly rapid loss of species, water wars, overpopulation, human mass migration – all these await mankind. Climate change, just to take the most obvious example, is a vastly more immense, much more complicated problem that requires navigation of complex scientific analysis and the imposition of painful policies internationally to ensure collective survival.
Water wars are no longer from apocalyptic imagery. Something as dramatic is already happening in Taiwan, where a drought is causing chip manufacturers to compete with locals for water use. Starting on June 1, in fact, the country will cut water supply for the major chip making hub Taichung. Because a front brought over 100mm rain since last Sunday, the hub of Hsinchu has not cut off water. This released in part the tension, but the drought crisis is still there and the alert level is rising to its highest.
