UnderwoodFlow

Flow: For the Love of Water

After watching this movie, I am honestly outraged. I mean, I knew about the evils of big corporations, and about how Nestle is taking over water resources in Maine and making it so the local people are losing their water supplies and their lakes are lowering. But I did not realize all of the other problems there are with water, and how completely far spread it is. I guess that’s why this film has won so many awards, because it’s geared toward people who only have an inkling of what’s going on, like me, and toward people who have absolutely no clue, and well, in places where we don’t have to really think about water because we can just turn on the tap and it’s there, that’s most of us.

Flow was released in 2008 as in independent film, directed by Steven Starr, and since then has gone on to attract a lot of attention, not just in the U.S., but in many countries, and has even been recognized by the U.N. It argues against the privatization of water, and reminds us that we need to think about water, because at the rate we’re using and polluting it, we’ll run out, which is really hard to comprehend when you’ve been raised without really having to think about water, and where it comes from.

The problem with water is that we need it for life. We need it every day, and we need it to be clean. However, we are polluting it more than we are treating it. Rocket fuel, synthetic chemicals, pesticides, fertilizer, pharmaceuticals, these all end up in our water, and we don’t treat the water to take them out. Agriculture accounts for 70% of the world water use, industry for 20%, and the measly 10% left is used by people for everyday uses. That’s not very much. But that 10% is being taken over by private industries, by people who charge us money to use water. We should absolutely not have to pay for water, no more than we should have to pay for air. But because they can touch it, put it in pipes and keep it away from people who haven’t paid, they do. In the last 10 years, three private companies have taken over control of most countries water systems. They make people prepay for water, and most of these people cannot afford it. Some countries, like Bolivia, are forced to privatize their water even though they don’t want to, because the World Bank tells them that it will stop giving them loans if they don’t. What often happens is that the World Bank lends money to impoverished countries that it knows can’t repay them, and then because the country is in so much debt, the World Bank basically ends up governing them. There is a lot of corruption in the World Bank, and it’s not surprising to find out that some of the members are also members of the three big water companies. This is a huge problem, because under international law, no one can take the World Bank to court.

The water problem is basically caused by two things, our stupidity in not taking care of it better, and highly corrupted corporate power. But it’s not really that simple, is it? There are a lot of things that have been building up to cause this, that we just haven’t noticed soon enough. There’s the rise of pharmaceuticals, which, once they go through our bodies, end up in our sewage, then back in the water system. There’s the switch from small, family farms to big agribusiness. There’s the toxic substances that we use in mass before we really understand them, like atrizene, which has been found to de-masculinate and even feminize male frogs and fish, and is banned in all European countries, yet the EPA has declared it to be harmless. There’s the lack of sewage treatment in developing nations. And then, there’s the rise of big corporations, who no longer care about the common people.

Flow surprisingly does really well at covering all of this, at making it all seem important, and well, real. It uses both concrete scientific facts and demonstrates the personal, human side of the problem as well. I think it is the interviews with the average people in impoverished countries that don’t have access to clean water that makes this film the most effective, and combining these interviews with scientific fact makes the argument all the stronger. The only part that wasn’t as convincing was the when the activists were talking about how they were sure we could make a change. Unfortunately, there aren’t many solutions. There is one that seems really promising, which is a UV filtering system. UV light kills pathogens in water, so by setting up a small aluminum bed with a UV light, a village can treat their water and be certain that it’s safe, and it only costs two dollars a year for the people to get water from it. So far, this system has helped 300,000 people. This system is especially good because it’s a local solution. Small treatment centers can be set up in any village, so water no longer has to be piped in from far away. Hopefully this technology will spread.

The only other solution the film presents is protesting, which unfortunately may be the only answer because so many of the causes to the problem are corporate or government based. One thing I found completely awesome though, is that the film has its own website, [|www.flowthefilm.com]. On this site, there is a section called take action, which links you to a whole bunch of initiatives, including a petition to sign to add a new article to the Declaration of Human Rights that would declare water a universal human right, which you can sign by going to []. I also recommend [], because it basically acts as a water centered newspaper. I really think that this film should be viewed by everyone. Perhaps if Oprah suggested it….