Earth would be only a dead stellar stone it wasn't for the magic of the Sun, profusely dispensing to it it’s formidable energy. Another history was being prepared. A history of complicity between Earth, Water and Light.
The grand adventure of Life was ready to start When the astronomers find out a new planet, the first question they ask is: Is there water on it? In fact, they are not asking about water, but rather about Life. Because the Life as we know it only exists because of water.
The fact that we’re complex beings from the social, cultural and political point of view doesn’t mean we aren’t biological beings. Today it doesn’t make sense talking about the history of humanity as if it wasn’t part of the history of Nature. It is.
Water was almost always considered, for example, of public interest, i. e. , a public good.
Water, generally. . .
Water has a very interesting name; it’s also called universal solvent, because it dissolves most of the substances. Since it dissolves most of the substances, man has learnt since quite early that if he throws his waste in a river, the river will dissolve it and take it away. Everyone is restoring the carbon mines region with biodiversity, but no one is worried about chemical restoration.
But we can’t restore the appearance of something and ignore the chemical part of it. So the water of the region is catastrofic. We’ve ruined the water quality of our rivers.
The quantity of water isn’t the same anymore because we don’t have the same quantity of forests the Brazilian State of Santa Catarina had before. There will be no fishes, no life, but there will be a beautiful green riverfront, right? You might get your finger melted in there.
Large quantities of really poisonous substances have been spread over nature, and unfortunately Brazil has become the world champion of chemical and pesticides usage in recent years. We should consider that both thermoeletric energy generation and food production, which stimulate the economy in Western Santa Catarina, cause big problems for surface waters. And groundwater has been, in both cases, the major possibility of maintaining this economic systems.
Is it a necessary evil, so we can have electric energy, development etc. ? Alright.
But for the environment, it may cause a totally irreversible impact, which seems to be a taboo, right? Pinus elliottii is a problem, “such a thing” is a problem. But the hydroelectric power plant isn’t a problem because we want to turn on the light at home.
In my opinion and in the view of the vast majority, pine plantations are a plague. Because it’s nearly completly destroyed fauna and seriously harmed flora. And we know what has happened due to the expansion of etanol production and sugarcane production for so much etanol in the state of São Paulo.
And also due to large pasture lands in the state of São Paulo, South and West of the state of Minas Gerais, and the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. So if sugarcane is produced in pasture lands, where to have the cattle been displaced? They have gone to Amazonia.
In fact, because the rivers are poluted, people are looking for groundwater. We have been studying the metropolitan area of São Paulo for years, and the groundwater there makes a difference for the city’s water security. There is a commonly held idea that the aquifer would be a kind of a layer of water Actually, it is a water-bearing rock.
When the pressure to extract groundwater starts, and while we know this water can only be extracted once, because it's a water. . .
it's a mining process And this happens only once, because groundwater recharge occurs once in thousands of years. The greatest importance of the Guarani Aquifer lies in its location. It is located in a densely populated region that contains big industrial projects and is vastly used for agriculture.
Moreover, the Guarani Aquifer and the Serra Geral Aquifer system, which is placed over it, are closely interconnected. People believe groundwater is a drinking water that requires no treatment, don't they? Unfortunately, many of the groundwater wells are somehow contaminated in present days.
We got surprised last year by the possibility of using hydraulic fracturing for shale gas extraction (fracking) in Brazil. Under these aquifers there are some rock layers that might be used for that. However, using hydraulic fracturing for that purpose may very likely contaminate both aquifers.
Then, before authorizing it, we need to be absolutely sure that there will be no water contamination in the aquifers, which occur in the states of Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná and São Paulo. that we make sure that there is security, when allowing the usage. This security is not what we can see at the moment in the USA, for instance, where the use of fracking for shale gas extraction has been connected to water contamination, to diseases that affect people in the frack region and to disruptment of other economic systems.
“With its high and curved rim, a flat-bottom bowl is the best object in a house to collect water that drops from holes in the roof. Outdoors, the rain water will also flow off to sunken areas and soak the soil or join the water of surrouding lands, forming streams and rivulets that will reach the main river in a drainage system, which occupies all the parts of this big basin: The watershed. The history of the basin is the history of its river, valleys, mountains, meadows and forests.
But it is also the history of the people that live in the basin and depend on it to survive. It is a relation of solidarity in which the inhabitants’ quality of life depends on the environmental quality of the watershed. ” - Luiz Fernando Scheibe Ecosystems exist to protect us.
The forest must be thick because only a thick forest holds water. A sparse forest or pastures do not hold rain water. Banana trees don’t hold the rain, and the ravines collapse.
So the ecosystems need to be recovered urgently. The watershed is the basic unit for the implementation of a water policy. Moreover, it has to be managed collaboratively.
Watershed Management Committees are responsible for the water management in every watershed. To this end we have to come up with new strategies to promote good co-existence of men and water, and particularly with a water use that is consistent with the water supply So, don’t instal intensive water-consuming industries in areas of water shortage, and don’t introduce high water-consuming agricultural activities in areas with no water supply. We wrongly assume that we can overcome the lack of a given resource by finding a new source of such a resource, so we can permanently have it to meet our needs.
In the history of humanity, the history of several nations, their geography, are bounded by the rules of water resource management. So, what were these values? That’s a matter of civic value, the permanent conservation area.
It means that riparian forests, forests in mountains are not a favor; it is a right and an obligation. “All have the right to an environment that is ecologically in equilibrium, for shared use by the people, essential to a healthy quality of life, which imposes on both the government and society as a whole the duty of protecting it and preserving it for both the present and future generations. ” (1988, Brazil´s Constitution) If a resource is not ecologically in equilibrium, it must be clear that society caused such an unbalance.
Otherwise we’ll talk just about water, rather than about the way people use water. Ah! I believe privatization is a terrible problem.
It´s not the fact of being against privatization, I mean, I don’t think evertything should be in the hands of government, but water? Water privatization is the same as air privatization. We have to compare water to air.
We can’t believe that everything that is part of our system of property and cumulation or of our society rules is unrelated to nature; in fact; such unbalances in nature are the result of this form of society that we have created. If a private corporation owns the water, it will only aim for making profit, making money. Let me say, our society assumes that it can produce unlimitedly.
The so-called productivist society wants to produce, produce, produce, and at the end, we start to deal with the shortage phenomenon. No one produces iron. No society produces iron: extract it.
No society produces crude oil: extract it. That’s why this reasoning is essential, because when you produce you are said to be productivist. If I produce something, I can produce this unlimitedly.
Therefore, what is being discussed nowadays is what mechanisms may be in place so the mankind will be able to socially reappropriate nature rather than let it at the service of accumulation processes. “Not only man, but also cities, industries and agriculture are part of the water cycle. The unbalanced use of water reflects the complex and contradictory relations between society and nature” - Carlos Walter Porto Gonçalves That is, they’ve privatized the sky.
Rain falls from sky, but you can’t collect and store rainwater at home, because it’s a crime. We’re claiming the right to do what the colonizers did to us. We are claiming the right to be like them.
See how much we were colonized. I’d say that the idea of dominating nature, which I believe is the center of the current civilization, reaches it’s limit exactly when we get to the point we are now. People only start thinking about something when it starts running out.
The state of Sao Paulo must be concerned with water now. But nobody there has thought about water before. But there are still few people that think about the water problem, right?
That is, while capitalism and all this pressure exist, we’ll deal with the consequences we’re experiencing today. Five or six years ago I was at the Mata region, in the state of Pernambuco. The water crisis that is happening in São Paulo now was happening there by that time.
I usually say that in the history of mankind we’ve never had forty years as devastating as the last four decades. When we think of water crisis, we are not thinking just about water, but about a crisis that is social and economic. In my opinion, environmental issues outlines, better than any other, a crisis that is also of civilization.
For example, let’s consider the ecological footprint of one USA inhabitant. It is 177 times larger than one Ethiopian, or 53 times larger than one Pakistany, that is, a baby born in the USA is equivalent to 177 babies born in Ethiopia. I’m not concerned with the population of Ethiopia, but rather with this American baby, who is equivalent to 177 Ethiopian babies.
So it isn’t a demografic problem strictu sensu, but the pressure over the planet is quite different. Yeah. .
. Brazil is a great exporter, and it exports much water, because every exported product carries within itself a lot of water, since it is part of the food production chain of animal products, such as milk, meat, these products have a lot of water, whether in the animal mass, or the animal’s food that will feed breeds all over the world. For example, I live in Niterói, state of Rio de Janeiro, but I eat meat from Paragominas in the state of Pará.
I wonder what are the energetic costs of this meat. This virtual, hidden water will for sure be missed in a Brazilian home at some point. A cultural change is necessary, so people can realize this consumption damages the quantity and quality of water resources in Brazil.
In the 80s, I came across a truck loaded with chicken from Chapecó, state of Santa Catarina, bogged in Altamira in the state of Pará, as if people in Amazonia not even knew how to raise chicken. But the Indians have never been stupid. They know how to survive from the net production of nature, that is between 40 and 70 tons of biomass per hectare every year.
We should value their amazing knowledge. I always give the example of the ice cream parlor of Cairu, in Belém, state of Para, which had 125 flavors of icecream in the 80s and still has dozens of flavors nowadays. I’m saying that there aren't flavors that aren’t derived from knowledge.
Cupuaçu, for instance: how the plant grows, when the fruit falls, how it is prepared. The same applies to taperebá, buriti, bacaba, açaí, when the fruit falls, how it is prepared. Some would say that only women know how to do it, but only peasants know how to do it, only indians know how to do it.
They sell 125 different flavors, but they aren’t only flavors, they are also knowledge. So when I see the oenologist’s sofistication, which is kind of pretentious and smugly, I realize the oenologist forgets about the deep commitment we should have to agrarian reform. France agrarian reform is what has allowed peasants keep doing Champagne, which is an area, Cognac, which is another area, Camembert, which is a cheese area, Roquefort.
. . Those names are the names of the local cultures, that show diversity.
But if I still think they’re inferior, outdated, ignorant, I have nothing to learn from them, which means I have also nothing to teach. But we are all incomplete, we and them. So let's slow down and recognize this and discuss this.
If you want to send a rocket to the moon, call NASA, because they know how to do it, they are specialists in it. Now, if you want to save the Amazon, talk to the indians, to riverine people, because they know it and are part of it. Every living being has pores, which are openings, holes.
Mouth, eyes are holes. That means we only exist because we have openings so we can get in touch with others. There’s a fantastic popular Brazilian saying according to which a dumb person is "tapado", closed, i.
e. , they have no pores. “But few know what river flows through my village, where it runs to, and where it comes from.
And for this reason, because it belongs to fewer people, it’s freer and bigger, the river of my village. " - Fernando Pessoa And we see people throwing garbage in the river. I myself have seen it.
And this bothers me. In the countryside, people don’t say sanitation is only in the city; sanitation is also necessary in the countryside. Everything must be recycled today.
Actually, we should have been aware of this since 50 years ago. My husband’s father has collected and my husband collects the same water. It’s been more than a hundred years they’ve been collecting that water.
And it’s a water. . .
Sometimes I wonder, there are so many people drinking dirty water, full of mud, and we have such a clean water. The future of the world, of our country, of our city is on children's hands. But I don’t see myself living in the city.
I’ll stay here forever, as long as I can. People that live in big buildings may be grateful to these big enterprises every morning. I am grateful for the water, for the air and for the birds that help me wake up every morning.
In my opinion. . .
it’s priceless.
