Ocean

Feel yourself, feel your body. It is nearly all liquid. Roughly eighty percent of us is water. Our bodies are quite squishy, wet things, They are full of tough little proteins and complex physical structures, and these are all wet, all floating in fluid, in water, the universal solvent.

Life started in water and the background of all life is still water. To say that we depend on water is to mistake the case: we are water. We are very complicated drops of water; no water, no us: The chemical processes in our bodies could not happen without water. Feel the saliva in your mouth, the moisture that makes us survive.

Where does the water come from?

	Does it come out of the tap, or maybe from a dam?
	Is it from the rain, or from the prevailing winds that brought it?
	Did it originate in the ocean?
	Maybe we get water from the food that we eat, the things we drink.
	Maybe it comes from all these places, and some others that we haven't thought of.

When we think about it, our water comes from everywhere.
It is a property of the total system and originates with the universe.

Without water we would last about three days. During that time the body would use up it's stored surplus water and then it would die. When you're thirsty it's very easy to understand interdependence. We're not separate from the water. Water is not just simply a given, separated from us and all living systems. Water is used and maintained by living beings, and without them the planet's water systems would be very different.

Let's take and interesting example: here in the Western Cape region of South Africa, we have unusually good water, and, it would seem, just enough to sustain our present population, along with its industrial and economic activity. The Western Cape is the site of a very old ecological system, known as fynbos. This system is only found here, and is unusually diverse and complicated, partly because it escaped the last ice age. As a result, there are more plant species on Table Mountain alone than on the entire British Isles!

Lets think about fynbos and water. Fynbos is the unique plant ecology found on our mountains, in our water catchment areas. This ecology binds the soil in very particular ways. Its root systems, as well as the soil that fynbos creates, acts as a huge sponge holding water throughout the year and gradually delivering it into the catchment areas, into the rivers and streams. In the process the water is filtered, which explains why, when we are walking anywhere in the Western Cape which is not heavily urbanised, we can drink this wonderful clear water.

But areas which are covered by alien trees like pine trees, Port Jackson Willows or various kinds of wattles deliver much less water. The figure that we have been given by an ecologist working at U.C.T. is that they deliver about half the water. The rest of the water is sucked up into the trees and transpired into the air. If enough of the fynbos is destroyed, enough of our local ecology is destroyed, (and it's vanishing at an alarming rate with over-frequent fires, alien invasion, and lack of funds to look after the catchment areas) it will inevitably affect Cape Town's water supply over time. The ANC's Minister of Water Affairs has fortunately recognised this and and has allocated funds and labour to address the problem. Whether this will be enough remains to be seen. I leave you to imagine that if the water supply is compromised, whether the poor or the privileged will suffer first.

There are people who think that the big problem with local water supply is population and urban growth. More and more people are settling in the Western Cape at this time in history. These people have come from rural areas where the conditions were very bad, and where it was difficult for them to make a living. Settling around Cape Town in squatter areas and townships, they need water. Some say that if the population grows much more, there will not be enough water to supply them. But if we look at the way that water is actually used in the Western Cape, we will see a different picture.

Water use in the Cape Town Municipal Area

Domestic Water usage: High-income suburbs of Cape Town

What do these water-usage patterns mean?

	By far the majority of water is used on suburban (high-income) gardens
	A large portion of water used on gardens goes to waste through spray irrigation and run-off
	Large amounts of water are simply wasted (unaccounted-for)
	Water is not evenly distributed - low-income families don't have facilities for much more than drinking and cooking (about 2% of usage)

This means that an increase in low-income population will not make a big difference in terms of the demand for water. Far more of a difference would be made if people with gardens grew more hardy local (African) plants which need less water and used water more efficiently and if local industry and commerce used water more efficiently. It seems as if people are using the issue of water to attack urbanisation, and at the same time are using the issue of population pressure to hide the wasteful practices of industries and high-income gardening.

The Oceans

Lets have a look at the ocean, where nearly all the water on our planet is. The Western Cape has a long coastline, and, before white settlers arrived, this coast supported many local Khoi and San people. Many people still make a living from the sea including fishermen, transport workers, boat builders and so on. Many people are also dependent for a living on the tourists who come to the Cape for its fine beaches and harbours.

The oceans have been there for billions of years, but that doesn't mean that they'll always be the same, always be a big resource for people. The ocean has, for all this time, been tended by living systems. They have looked after the amount of salt, oxygen, carbon dioxide and all sorts of other important substances in the sea. If the sea got more salty, for instance, nothing would be able to live there. If there was less oxygen in its water, the living things there would suffocate. Among the biggest producers of oxygen for the planet, for our atmosphere, are the tiny plankton, single celled creatures which live at the surface of the sea. Ocean currents affect the climate of the world in profound ways, affecting the weather and coastal and marine eco-systems.

But, under the impact of what people are doing, the oceans are changing. Here are a few examples:

	Marine pollution (oil and industrial chemicals) is endangering coastal systems
	Ozone depletion threatens marine plankton - on which all life on earth depends
	Over-fishing and over-exploitation of coastal resources like crawfish have severely depleted resources and lowered catches
	Global warming threatens to melt polar ice and increase sea level - the Cape Flats could be under water in thirty years (within our lifetimes)

 

Some Questions

?	What kind of water do different people get (how pure etc.)?
?	Do we choose the way that our water will be?
?	What's in it?
?	How is the content of water controlled?
?	Who must carry water, and who gets it from a tap?
?	What are the results of this, for peoples' health?
?	Can one own the water, and by what right?
?	How is access to water controlled?
?	Do we have a say? If not, why not?
?	Is water from a tap a basic right? If not, Why not?
?	What will be the costs of allowing all people access to water?
?	How will our society pay?
?	If we see water as a necessary part of our self, does that change the way that we relate to the politics of water supply?

In our country as elsewhere access to water will be a defining political issue during the next century. I think that throughout Africa, water is going to possibly be the defining political issue for a number of developing countries.

Water is also a personal issue. If we think of ourselves as this very complicated drop of water, surrounded by skin, we may begin to get more interested in the politics of water. The religious metaphor that says 'we are a drop of the ocean' turns out to be quite literally true.