A Reality Check

In light of the situation here in Panama over the past four weeks, first with extensive flooding of certain regions of the country, and then complications moving into contamination of the capital city's water supply, today I find myself exceedingly grateful for something mentioned in the earlier days of my musings on gratitude: running water.

We, and tens of thousands of other Panamanians, have been without water on and off since December 8, 2010 -- sometimes for days at a time, and others for 12-hour periods in which the city alternates as best it can our limited supply of this precious natural resource. This week, however, has brought a new development: our running water is not potable. The stock of bottled water has been depleted in all local stores, and so we are left with the only option of treating our water at home: first filtering our tap water, then boiling it on the stove, letting it cool, and then consuming -- rather sparingly -- a refreshing glass of H2O.

This certainly has brought me greater perspective on the situation in which much of the world finds itself on a daily basis, with little or no access to safe drinking water. We, who have grown up in Canada, the United States, parts of Western Europe and certain other nations, will be hard-pressed ever to appreciate what this means. I suppose we could play the numbers game, try to go a day without using the water from our taps -- for bathing, drinking, laundry, or other cleaning -- but still we know that water is just an arm's length and a tap-turn away. It has even been an adjustment for me, and this is after the five months we lived on the beach in the interior of Panama with no access to running water at all, and after months spent in rural Haiti without the same. I am exceedingly grateful that neither Ramón nor I have gotten sick from the water we are drinking this week.

This brings to mind the events leading up to, including and following the Millennium Declaration of 2000, which birthed the United Nations Milennium Development Goals (MDG's) -- a "global action plan to achieve the eight anti-poverty goals by their 2015 target date,"1 which lists, as a component of its goals, the importance of drastically increasing access to safe drinking water on a global scale. As listed on the UN MDG website, the Millennium Development Goals are as follows:

1. End Poverty and Hunger

2. Universal Education

3. Gender Equality

4. Child Health

5. Maternal Health

6. Combat HIV/AIDS

7. Environmental Sustainability

8. Global Partnership

Each of these points is further broken down into several more detailed steps or components. Access to safe drinking water falls under "Target 7.C: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation." However, below this point it states that "[w]ith half the population of developing nations without sanitation, the 2015 target appears to be out of reach." (see the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals Report 2010 pdf here).

I understand that this issue is highly complex, particularly when factoring in issues such as displaced persons, failed states, political unrest and civil wars, entire nations impoverished, contamination/pollution, natural disasters -- the list could go on and on. But it is no wonder that countries and regions such as Haiti, Sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of Asia continue to battle diarrhoeal diseases and undernutrition when the water they consume is not safe!

Nonetheless, I remain hopeful that each of these eight goals -- particularly that of access to safe drinking water -- are, in fact, achievable with the cooperation and involvement of individuals, local communities, the international community and corporations. I believe it is important to acknowledge the truth of what is stated in the Foreword of the 2010 MDG Report -- that "improvements in the lives of the poor have been unacceptably slow, and...are being eroded by the climate, food and economic crises"2 -- and, after accepting and grieving this truth, move forward in our own contributions to achieving these goals, not only for the comfortable world of middle-class suburbia, but also for the world.

Footnotes:

1. "global action plan" - source - http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

2. Millennium Development Goals Report 2010, page 5 http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/MDG%20Report%202010%20En%20r15%20-low%20res%2020100615%20-.pdf

Photo mine; taken in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, February 2008.