Water for all! -- it's a question of justice

Living without air? Hard to imagine. Living without water? That's no easier. And yet even today more than a billion people have no access to safe drinking water.

On a visit to Niger in December 2007, as an ambassador for Oxfam Québec, I came face to face with this reality. For me, a former Olympic swimmer whose life has been intimately linked to water, the shock was especially great. How could I explain synchronized swimming to women who have to walk more than 6 km every day to find water? And how can we accept that every day some 4000 children around the world will die of diarrhoea, a disease caused by contaminated water? In developing countries, 80% of illnesses are water related.

We are lucky that we don't have to worry about water. We are privileged -- we just turn on the tap and out comes the "blue gold" that so many people are literally dying for. But is it really a privilege? As a Canadian, do I have the right to consume 326 litres of water every day, when one person in six cannot even get the minimum for survival, which is 20 litres?

Experts meeting at the World Water Forum this week sounded the alarm: we all have the responsibility to "protect" water, before it's too late. We need to take stock of our over-consumption of water and change our habits so as to preserve this resource. We also need to press the international community to invest in water supply, and to help the most vulnerable people deal with this crisis.

To mark World Water Day, then, I'm rolling up my sleeves and I'm joining Oxfam Québec in its call to action: express your solidarity with people who have no access to water! Sign the For All! Campaign petition, calculate your water consumption, and make a donation to help supply drinking water to people in the South.

Together, we can make a difference!