"Han arribat ses plujas" ("Han
llegado las lluvias" in Spanish /Castellano): the rains
have come. Between 1.30-2.30am of Sunday the 2nd of September
the island was treated to a spectacular display of cloud thunder
which outdid any son et lumière' effects that
the island's discotheques could ever hope to produce. Cloud
thunder is more common later in the year in Eivissa, and is
marked by absolutely stunning cloud-centred lightning which
illuminates the clouds but whose lightning bolts do not reach
earthwards. The storm of 2nd September, which swept the island
from north to south, not only lit the whole island from above
but also shook the houses and ground as the intense rolling
thunder followed its course. The Saturday night/Sunday morning
amassed crowds in the discotheques may have thought it was
all part of the show, put on for their benefit - if they noticed
it at all, enclosed in their various assorted Paradis'/'Privilege'/
Amnesia'/ Space' capsules. The accompanying rains
were relatively gentle in most areas, but enough to take the
edge off of things.
Or so people thought. The island was so
dry that obviously this was not enough. Around 4pm on that
Sunday afternoon smoke was spotted coming from a small wooded
valley high up the forested slopes on the southwestern side
of the hills surrounding Es Broll de Buscastell in the north-northwestern
interior of the island. By 6pm two small Air Tractor water
planes and a large Canadair (from Mallorca) water plane had
accurately pinpointed the outbreak and for an hour performed
an intricate ballet in the skies of this more remote part
of the island dumping tons of water over the blaze. The Canadair,
in a series of complex manoeuvres, scooped up water from the
sea to the northwest of Portmany (San Antonio) to fly it inland
and dump it, each return run taking only seven minutes. Although
the fire was, because of this rapid action, restricted to
only two hectares of forest, the ground and vegetation - in
spite of the rain - was so hot and dry that ground-based fire-fighters
had to continue work in the area through to Monday night to
prevent the fire breaking out again and spreading.
In the old' days - up through the
195Os and 1960s - forest trees were kept trimmed and undergrowth
was cleared as a traditional measure by pagès Eivissencs
to impede the spread of forest fires. Easy and safe access
through most of the forest was necessary, as traditionally
Eivissa was a major producer of wood charcoal for both home
use and export. The rapid breakdown of the traditional peasant
culture and the movement of pagès families from areas
of the interior towards the developing modern tourism-based
economy on the coast, particularly from the 1970s, was the
death-knell for such traditional forest care. The increasing
dryness of the island and the increasing number of foreign
visitors who may not be aware of normal pagès precautions
against forest fires have increased the annual risk of such
outbreaks. Recent studies have indicated that less than 3%
of such outbreaks on the island are due to natural causes.
Luckily, a lighter display of cloud lightning,
but accompanied by heavier rains, reached the island in the
early morning of Thursday, 6th September and it continues
to rain as I write this. The rains seem lighter in the western
side of the island than the eastern side, but this is normal.
These rains will now enable pagès who were not able
to safely burn off their collections of dried undergrowth
and brushwood to do so without fear of flying sparks starting
a larger conflagration. One can soon expect to see myriads
of small columns of smoke arising from isolated areas of the
island, a bit like an intense discussion by American Indian
smoke signals, but without the dots and commas.
The hot, dry summer is drawing to its close,
but not the water problems. Those tourists driving their rentacars
(sometimes rather dangerously) along the island's country
roads may, in rather out-of-the-way places, have been slightly
puzzled to see dotted around the landscape numerous tall thin
red metallic pillar-like structures. Not an invasion of Triffids
but a necessary accessory in the search for underground water
supplies: these structures house the portable perforation
drillers that will go sometimes 300 metres or so down to try
and find water. These can be official drillers for municipal
water supply assistance or hired out to dig ones maybe already
dry well deeper or to look for water in another area. But
there is possibly a certain amount of frenzy here, as, according
to the Governments Plan Ecologico Internacional, 1st October
2001 seems to be the deadline for registering new wells. For
those wells legalized before 1985 but not yet included in
the government's Catalogue of Private Water (supplies)',
it is a final chance to have one's water included. Such a
Catalogue will be of use for the local and national governments,
especially at a time when the water supply situation is becoming
more tenuous, and it will assist officials in advising the
maximum amount of water that can ideally be used from each
supply per 24 hour period once an idea of the island's water
resources can be developed. Certain pagès, though,
may suspect that such moves may foreshadow certain forms of
control or a new form of tax. For those with an insight into
local history, a wry smile comes to one's lips when one remembers
Eivissa's historical reactions to attempted taxation attempts
from neighbouring Mallorca.
The intricacies' of town water supply
will be familiar to film buffs who have seen Roman Polanski's
1974 film, Chinatown', set in late 1930s Los Angeles
(thanks to Emily Kaufman for putting me on to this). Private
detective Jack Nicholson stumbles upon a plot, during a severe
drought, for business interests to manipulate the city's water
supply for financial benefit. Those who control water supply
can control a city - or profit greatly from it. Los Angeles
is still today in a rather precarious situation regarding
water. The worst case scenario' film for water is the
1986 MGM/UA release Solar Warriors' (not one of the
film industry's most memorable products), set on Earth in
the Future when The System' controls everything including
the most scarce resource, drinkable water. Water is used as
a form of payment, its withholding and giving completely in
the hands of a restrictive form of government. A group of
rebels, known as Eco Warriors', fight for freedom and
free water. Sounds like complete fantasy? Wait for it
.
In the late 1990s the World Bank stated
"The wars of the next century will be about water".
Ninety seven percent of the world's water is saltwater and
only just over 2.5% is freshwater. Much of the latter is locked
up in icecaps; the rest is in rivers, lakes, reservoirs and
groundwater. Only 0.5% is easily available and the only way
to renew it is by rainfall. Melting of the fresh water in
the polar icecaps just puts it into the sea. Although theoretically
the earth has enough fresh water for its 6 billion inhabitants,
its quality and distribution leave a lot to be desired. Today
1.1 Billion people lack access to acceptable drinking water
supplies and 2.4 million do not have access to basic sanitation.
Global water consumption is at the moment increasing at twice
the rate of population growth. According to the World Commission
on Water human water needs will have grown another 40% by
the year 2020. Nearly 10% of our world's agricultural food
production relies upon groundwater use and water tables are
falling dramatically in India, China, Mexico and the Yemen
(to name but a few areas). It is predicted that by the year
2008 Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, will have no water left
and tribal disputes over water are already taking place in
the country areas. Worldwide, desertification threatens a
quarter of the earth's surface and 6 million hectares of productive
land have been lost each year in the last decade due to such
processes. Approximately 12 million people a year die owing
to water shortages or contaminated drinking water. One could
go on almost ad infinitum.
Many of such problems may be due to aspects
of global warming, but not all. Human stupidity, greed and
shortsightedness are, unfortunately, major factors. This makes
the failure of the World Climate Summit in The Hague in November
2000 all the more tragic - and, unfortunately, all the more
understandable. The absolute perfect example of such attitudes
was that of the US representative at the summit who basically
said " We are here to recognize reality, see what is
possible
. and then negotiate". It was around this
point in the meeting that a large cream pie hit him in the
face. The 17th June 2001 was the UN's World Day to Combat
Desertification and Drought' and the official UNDP report
released, although recognizing the role of climate change,
classed humans as the main cause of desertification. As the
BBC World Service Radio summarized the report that day, it
was straightforward; 1) Too many people, 2) Too much civilization',
3) Too little care.
The World Conference to Combat Desertification
held in Bonn, 11th-22nd December 2000 and the 2001 Stockholm
Water Symposium and World Water Week (held in Stockholm in
mid-August this year) were serious attempts to deal at a scientific
level with these looming problems. Over 1,100 water experts
attended the Stockholm meetings. For a field anthropologist
like myself, though, it always surprises me how long it seems
to take educated white societies years and years to really
move on extremely urgent matters. Traditionally oriented,
isolated non-literate societies actually seem as quick, if
not quicker, than us to pick up environmental nuances, changes
and needs. Unfortunately our governments do not listen to
them. In the mid-to-late 1980s the sacred sun-priests, Mamas',
of the Kaggaba (Kogi) Indians hidden high in the vast reaches
of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains in northern
Colombia began to see signs that indicated possible forthcoming
doom to the World. The Kaggaba are the last mountain tribe
in the Americas never to have been missionised and are effectively
the last surviving pre-Colombian civilization'. Their
geographical isolation and their desire and need to be left
alone as much as possible has meant that one of the worlds
most spiritually deep and environmentally aware societies
still exists and they can teach us a lot more than we can
teach them. Their ruling priests were already picking up indications
regarding worldwide climate change and water and weather and
sky problems either before or around the same that our scientists
were doing so. But then the Kaggaba have had hundreds of years
more than we have had preparing to look for these critical
indicators. They use one word in their language to describe
all of us - Kasaoggi' - and they have said for centuries
that the Kasaoggi' would start bickering and fighting
amongst themselves once the latter finally realized that their
own activities were destroying the world. What we all have
to realize is that most traditionally-oriented and non-literate
societies (those that used to be called primitive tribes',
who, of course, are not primitive' at all, just not
as technologically advanced' as we think we are) look
upon the land, sea, air, water - and ultimately earth',
however they conceive it to be - as parts of a complex living
whole. These societies and cultures are in a majority on this
earth - not in numbers of people but in numbers of languages
and cultures. Our Euro-American series of cultures are in
a definite numerical minority. In the small Republic of Vanuatu
in the southwestern Pacific alone there are twice as many
different languages and cultures as in the whole of Europe.
Many inhabitants of the island of Tanna, in southern Vanuatu,
see no contradiction in the fact that although white people
in general have education and their material things they do
not seem to have any idea about protection of the environment.
For many of the people from Tanna, the explanation is simple:
at the origin of the world's peoples, the ancestors of the
white peoples were given the Knowledge of Technology, the
ancestors of the Melanesians (black southwestern Pacific islanders
- no connection with Africa) were given the Knowledge of Nature.
And it is as simple as that: white people (i.e. us) haven't
really been able to do much about the environment except to
seemingly try and damage it because we don't really have any
natural feeling, understanding or respect for it. White people
do, though, think they know everything or at least like to
try and control it.
It looks like these peoples may be correct,
but not necessarily for the right reasons. For them, a ruling
characteristic of white society (if they have come into contact
with it - and there are still a few isolated spots in the
world where our clumsy feet have not yet trod) seems to be
that staple of modern' society, greed. I would, unfortunately,
tend to agree with them. As clean fresh water becomes a resource
that will be ever increasingly valuable, one can see the sharks
- or vultures - beginning to gather. At the 1999 annual World
Economic Development Congress, which follows the annual World
Bank/IMF (International Monetary Fund) meeting, members sat
down to a heavy series of panel discussions that were a lightly
disguised approach to commodification (and subsequent privatization)
of the worlds fresh water supplies and its mass transport.
Treat water like any other commodity (gold, coffee, soya beans,
etc) and let its use be determined by free market principles'.
Of course the term free market principles' is a classic
misnomer, it seems basically to mean that what one may have
been able to obtain for free in the past (e.g., one's own
water from ones own spring or well on Eivissa) one might now
have to pay for - and through the nose at that. And under
a blaze of spin-doctor publicity lauding the benefits to all
of joining such international trade agreements as NAFTA (North
American Free Trade Association) and the WTO (World Trade
Organization) signatory governments around the world are unknowingly
signing away the rights to control their own domestic water
supplies. At the same time they are setting themselves up
to be potentially sued by wily overseas companies or transnational
corporations if they don't allow them in to introduce free
market principles'. If this were a science fiction/suspense/murder/horror
film one would just need the entrance of a last character
of the I wouldn't want my sister to go out with him'
type. The door opens and in walks Monsanto, the chemical giant
with an interest in agriculture through control over
seed' and now, since the late 1990s casting its eyes in the
same way towards water. India, much enamoured by the World
Bank and the IMF, appears to be the first major target of
Monsanto's love affair with water. As Robert Farley of Monsanto
said, "What you are seeing is
really a consolidation
of the entire food chain. Since water is as central to food
production as seed is, and with water life is not possible,
Monsanto is now trying to establish its control over water.
During 1999 Monsanto plans to launch a new water business,
starting with India and Mexico since both these countries
are facing water shortages. Well, you can't get subtler than
that!
Does the world really need or want the World
Bank, IMF, NAFTA, WTO and certain multinationals to be involved
in looking after the world's water? Next week we will have
an anthropological look at these institutions, their work
and plans. It is not as plain sailing as it may seem.
I leave you with a recent quote from an
individual living in the high New Mexican desert in an area
whose community water supply was diverted for industrial use:
"Water flows uphill to money".
Kirk W Huffman
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