Water
An interactive platform for community driven content on social issues + activism.
Written by
Laura
February 26, 2007
CitizenShift will proudly present a water-themed film festival throughout the month of March to celebrate the launch of our new Water dossier…and it?s gonna be wicked!
A bunch of provocative short docs that highlight the urgency of water privatization and pollution will feature, including Water Warriors, Turn off the Tap, Water We Drinking and much more! 
Join us for this free event across Canada!
Cinema Politica will kick-start the film fest with a screening at Concordia University in Montreal on March 19th and then the SFU Harbour Centre in Vancouver on March 21st.
Halifax, Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Victoria are on our schedule, so please keep updated through our H20 blog!
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Written by
Brennan
February 19, 2007
Here’s a tacit, cloaked, veiled and dangerous precedent: the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has endorsed and partnered with a bottled water company from Edmonton, Alberta called Earth Water International (http://www.earthwater.ca/) whose profit - after salaries and capital investment - go to the UNHCR.
This year, that amounted to $30,000 CDN. I wonder how much was held back before this amount was given to the UNHCR? Maybe someone that finds my criticism of both this water company and the UNHCR can comment on my analysis and enlighten me to the realities of water for profit and perhaps convince me that this is a good idea. As it stands now, I think this is a bad idea simply because it sends the wrong message.
Bottled water is an insult in Canada to the fact that the infrastructure of the developed world has already been invested to bring clean water to various significant locations—like the tap we use to drink water, shower, and fill our ice cube trays. The contemporary arguments now seem to be that this form of infrastructure wastes water– either in the weaknesses of this vast system of pipes in the form of tacit leaks– worse yet, individual users are not responsible enough to control their own water use and… gasp… waste water!
I think herein lies one of the greatest dangers of the prefabricated and corporately packaged myths of the 20th Century (Thanks to commercial and now non-commercial media alike): The collective commons has been taken away specifically because the autonomous individual can no longer make decisions, make correct decisions, make informed decisions about how one should act– and that includes everything from the language we use, to the way we drive cars, to our use of water. What this means is that the illusion of our autonomy is wrapped up in what corporations are able to package and market to the consumer… and in this case that happens also to be bottled water.
In terms of an energy quotient, bottled water is appalling. Individually packaged and relatively small amounts of water for individual consumption for convenience purposes means that the amount of energy used to distribute these small bottles is massive. Discreet packages mean units travel far and wide, and permeate both the environment and the mental landscape. It has also been marketed to death as healthy… healthier than tap water, the water that we all here have in the developed world because we invested in the infrastructure many decades ago– and that system has been energy efficient and productive for a long time. Bottled water’s utility is ephemeral at best, yet the waste of single use bottles has a lasting and dangerous environmental impact.
Have a look at these articles and please feel free to comment if my analysis of this model is incorrect—keep in mind that I think the definition of “profit” is problematic. Profit by standard, common definition, to me, does not mean value or economy or wealth:
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/archives/story.html?id=4b696b65-6502-4a91-b3e3-edc2d7b6b725
http://www.vueweekly.com/articles/default.aspx?i=2488
http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/polisci/news.cfm?story=38203
http://www.gateway.ualberta.ca/view.php?aid=7506
http://money.canoe.ca/News/Economy/2007/02/11/3587911-cp.html
And just in case– take a look at the results of what plastics do to the environment and animal health — including those animals we call humans:
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/47849/
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I watched The Chances of the World Changing by Eric Daniel Metzgar (2006) - www.thechancesoftheworldchanging.com and thought the film was powerful, yet filled with sorrow at the rate at which we are consuming the planet.
I think the world has not yet decided what is necessary as a need, and what is greed. The Chances of the World Changing is a good example of how we are still unable to come to terms with the things we need vs. what we want. Obviously in Asia - China mostly - the demand for turtles for food (specialized food I think) has caused the extinction of various species of turtles. These water creatures are clearly no longer safe from being taken from wild waters and left alone to exist and recreate. It seems not enough that any animal in the wild can exist without some negative relationship to humans. If we are not polluting the water, we are mining the water for anything that we can consume from the water — be it the shell of the turtle or its body for food. Humanity at this level of consumption is out of balance and will destroy the delicate relationship humans have with nature — a specific harmony that has been created over thousands of years. As we consume massive amounts of energy and the human population increases as a result of the current unfettered human availability to energy, we tilt the balanced relationship that humans have had with our environment to such an extreme that the entropy of a balance is disrupted to conclusion– the environment dies completely without any reaction to the imbalance. The result is simple stoppage. It will not be long after such a stoppage of nature that humans will most certainly perish.
Does humanity not have the insight to control our own aggression towards relatively harmless and helpless creatures of nature?
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Here’s a great example of citizen journalism taking an environmental stand.
The Great Lakes wiki is a fledgling repository for ’stories, information and resources,’ on our greatest freshwater resources.
‘This site explains the region’s environment, explores its culture, celebrates its recreation, discusses its challenges. You can launch an exploration of those topics and more from the links in the banner.
‘But this is an important story best told by you and others who care about the fate of 18 percent of the world’s fresh surface water. Go ahead, contribute. Create an article or add your unique twist to those already here. Here’s getting started.’
Not to mention, the launch of our WATER blog, where we’ll be keeping track of developments in our upcoming water dossier.
via Smartmobs
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Water has an energy value. When it is clean, it has a higher energy value because it requires no further energy input to be functionally valuable to life.
When Tantoo Cardinal says, ‘there is no energy more powerful than the life force’, she implies, I think, in scientific terms, that when water is clean and purified through nature itself, we have been given the gift of clean water without having to input further human energy expenditure to make water consumable for human life.
To purify water requires a great deal of energy and effort. It requires filtering, pumping, boiling, etc. These efforts all require energy. When we discuss comparative fractions such as, ‘it take four barrels of water to produce one barrel of oil in the Alberta tarsands’, we mean that four barrels of water become contaminated to the point of uselessness to life—human, plant, animal, insect, etc. The water of course does not disappear, but becomes contaminated. For us to recuperate those four barrels of water, a great deal of energy must be expended to rectify that water, to process that water to a form that is functional again to human/life consumption. And in this sense, we are lowering the quotient of energy input to energy output– or as some have defined, Energy Returned on Energy Invested: http://www.eroei.com.
The essence of all energy gathering is scientifically reliant on this equation. When we walk into the forest to pick fruit from a tree, the body expends a certain amount of calories to walk through the forest, seek the fruit, pick the fruit and eat the fruit. For a human body to stay alive, the energy consumed in the fruit must be greater than the energy expended to go through the process, start to finish, of acquiring the fruit in the forest. All energy gathering, whether eating fruit or acquiring petroleum energy, follow the same equation.
Keep in mind, that the universe has a few static laws. The laws of thermodynamics state that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, and when energy is transferred or transformed from one form (fruit) to another (human life) there is always some form of waste. Even in the case of human life, we breathe CO2– a greenhouse gas emission. This is the result of our bodies using food energy to pump blood, breath, chew, etc. Now extrapolate this same equation to the world writ large and you can see how the world is in the process of rapidly changing because the waste that is created by so much energy use has no where to go. Globally, we have expended massive amounts of petroleum energy in a short period of time. It should be noted that petroleum energy is just a reflection of stored energy—energy that, for the most part, is from the sun… energy that is a direct result of the sun´s rays hitting the earth thousands of years ago. Our waste, because the Earth is essentially a hermetically sealed globe floating in a consistent and specific pattern through space, is entirely contained. And the Earth is quite small in comparison to the amount of energy expended and transformed over the course of the 20th Century. So in a sense, humanity is attempting to thrive in the waste product of energy expenditure. At some point, the poison of energy expenditure waste will shift the Earth´s life balance and cause significant changes that we as humans may not be able to withstand or cope with.
There are many kinds of ‘waste’ products in energy conversion: sound, heat, light, etc. All of these elements of energy must be considered and the ultimate goal in this equation relative to human life on planet Earth is to reach a stasis between the energy that human life requires and the energy the Earth has to offer; it is to ensure that our energy quotient remains somewhat in balance– or one to one. If humanity only took what it was provided and/or needed, we would not have a planet suffering from exhaustion– suffering from a net loss of energy and net increase in toxins that are contrary to all life on Earth.
If water has an energy value, it is much higher than the price that a bottle of bottled water would lead you to believe.
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Written by
Brennan
January 19, 2007
Not only is water essential to all life on earth, it is not easily contained. It does not act like other “commodities”. Its abundance relative to other elements that have similar properties, such as its liquid form, is too voluminous to designate a “controlled substance”. Water´s presence is too ubiquitous, too uncontrollable to imagine that humanity can do anything but work with that which nature has provided. It links all natural life.
With this in mind, it is very difficult to understand that water needs to be regulated by government and respected by industry. While it appears that water is too important a physical requirement of life to leave in the hands of government regulators and offer to industry for use en masse, it is currently the case in modern industrial Canada.
I wonder to myself if regulatory bodies have neglected, relative to modern industrial development, that water is an uncontrollable substance and must be treated with entirely different care? While regulators are in place to make certain that nothing that can make water poisonous or incompatible with human needs, it´s truly a different case once water is poisoned. Once contamination of water takes place, there is little that can be done to control or contain the contamination without vast amounts of investment and energy—energy we may soon no longer have.
So why do we assume we can “regulate” water? Industry needs it, agriculture needs it, people need it, and for the most part, each of these entities need CLEAN water; water that does not contain impurities, solids, bacteria, etc.
There are a number of ways to contaminate water. While water can be naturally contaminated– because it is essential to life and is also the medium for a number of water-borne diseases–, the Canadian context is such that industrial pollution is perhaps of greater concern because industrial pollution is long-term. The energy needed to clean water that is organically polluted is relatively minimal in comparison to industrial contamination from wastes such as plastics, petroleum products, heavy metals, industrial chemicals, etc.
Ironically, water is so ubiquitous in some places and so utilitarian in a general sense, that we think it should be inexpensive, if not entirely free. As activists, as water activists, the situation we face is difficult because as we demand clean water as a Human Right, we also demand that water use in industry be paid for. It is an untenable situation. The designation of corporations as an “individuals” so effectively explained in The Corporation brings to mind the specific problem where corporations are legally protected as individuals. How do we ensure that access to clean water is a Human Right without the commons being sacrificed by those who have the privilege, mandate and control of energy to actively clean water and do so for all to benefit (rather than making that task a profitable venture)? After all, privatization of water is not like the privatization of any other consumable commodity. When it comes to water, we´re dealing with something entirely different. We are dealing with perhaps the highest form of any commodity in existence.
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“Of all the social and natural crises we humans face, the water crisis is the one that lies at the heart of our survival and that of our planet Earth.” -UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura, 2006
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS Water
CITIZENShift will be launching Water in honour of World Water Day, March 22, 2007.
There will be an online component as well as a screening/dialogue series across Canada.
We are currently seeking submissions of films, audio recordings, photos, and texts. We welcome materials on the topic of water under the themes of: conservation, pollution, water-related disasters, climate change, accessibility, diversion, privatization and conflicts. The focus is on the Canadian perspective of water problems and solutions, on the local and global level.
CITIZENShift (http://citizen.nfb.ca) is the National Film Board of Canada’s social issues website. It is an interactive platform for community-driven films, photography, articles, blogs and podcasts. Focusing on a new theme every month, CITIZENShift is a space for activists and artists to share media and ideas and to engage with one another.
CITIZENShift is inspired by Challenge for Change, a 1960s´ experimental National Film Board initiative that involved communities in their own documentary-filmmaking process. Over forty years later, CITIZENShift embraces new technology and offers a unique online platform that gives users a forum to debate social issues and encourages social change through media.
If you are passionate about using media to engage with others on the issue of water and would like to use CITIZENShift as a platform, send us a description of your material with notes about format and content.
Deadline: January 19, 2007
Hadas Levy Water Coordinator
CITIZENShift >> http://citizen.nfb.ca
National Film Board of Canada
Tel.: 604.666.9739 h.levy@nfb.ca
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Written by
catrina
November 24, 2006
As the token Vancouver CitizenShifter, I felt it was important to comment a little on the water situation out here. It amazes me that it takes a situation like this one (boiled water advisory for over a week now) to hopefully open up our eyes to how extremely LUCKY most of us are in this country, normally having access to such beautiful, clean drinkable and FREE water.
I’m trying not to go into the whole tragic.. or comical, ‘desperate plight’ reaction that people have had to buy the bottled stuff (we’re talking pushing people over to get the last bottle on the grocery store shelf)… even though boiled water has proven to be SAFE. Are we lazy? Misinformed? I understand that murky water ain’t so appetizing, but i think we way too often take the easy way out.
I think, instead, it is a time to reflect upon the fact that this is the reality for many around the world (unsafe/unclean water) due to various environmental, social & economic factors… and if we don’t take action now, this will become the norm for us too. I found an interesting blog by Rob Cottingham of Social Signals on this, as well as a news release fromt The David Suzuki Foundation here - and while we’re on the subject of David + water, watch him talking about global warming here…
A colleague and friend here thinks that the reason it has taken so long for the water to clear up is do to alot of the clear-cutting that happened on the North Shore here, which lead to more landslides, and less protection of our precious reservoirs. I tried to find some info on this, and found it difficult to find any mention of this fact in current news.. anyone out there with leads, i’d love to hear about them.
thanks. hope i didn’t rant too much.
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CITIZENShift is looking for a curator / project coordinator for the upcoming Water dossier.
Scheduled to launch mid-March, the curator for the Water dossier will gather films photos, texts, and web sites on issues surrounding Water. They will also be heavily involved in planning a cross-Canada tour of screenings and discussions with actively engaged communities and organizations.
If you are passionate about Water issues, outraged by pollution, concerned about privatization and connected to communities; you may be the perfect person to coordinate this dossier.
This is a part-time contract position, starting immediately, ending 31 March, 2007. You can be located anywhere in Canada.
If you are interested, please send your CV and a cover letter to citizen@nfb.ca by November 24th.
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