The Corporate Threat to Water and the Water Justice Movement's Fight to Protect it - Amy Goodman

The average Karachite might drink distilled water and complain of water delivery and shortages. But how well does s/he understand Indus Basin Treaty? The water and wastage management or rather mismanagement? The flow of fresh water into the sea has diminished by about 300 million cu secs I heard the other day and as a reaction the sea is encroaching inland.

Here are the transcripts of a programme by Amy Goodman. Click on the heading to read it in full.

PETER H. GLEICK: For the longest time, people have taken water for granted. Most people don't think about where their water comes from. They just turn on the tap, and they expect it to be there. Those days are ending.

MAUDE BARLOW: This notion that we'll have water forever is wrong. California is running out. It's got 20-some years of water. New Mexico has got 10, although they're building golf courses as fast as they can, so maybe they can whittle that down to five. Arizona, Florida, even the Great Lakes now, there's huge new demand.

PETER H. GLEICK: The Nile River doesn't reach its end. The Colorado River, the Yellow River in China, they, for the most part, don't flow anymore to the sea.

MAUDE BARLOW: So this notion that somehow these problems are far away, get rid of that. You know, take it out of your head. You know, delete that.

PATRICK McCULLY: We're treating the water resources of the planet with contempt, which is just so stupid, because we depend on them. We need water to live. We will only survive for a day or two if we don't have water.

WILLIAM E. MARKS: Scientists, through decades of study and millions and millions of pieces of data, now recognize the fact that we're on the brink of the sixth great mass extinction ever to be experienced on the face of the earth. The fifth mass extinction was the dinosaur age.