“The dove returned at sunset, carrying in its beak a green olive branch. Then Noah realized that the waters had receded from the surface of the earth”
Gn 7-8,11
Water is the largest natural resource on Earth, covering approximately 71% of the surface of its crust. Of this total, only 2.5% is fresh, while the rest is salt water. Surface water (lakes, reservoirs, rivers and wetlands) account for only 0.3% of the fresh water on the planet. Between 68% and 75% of the water in the world accumulates in glaciers. Stored fresh groundwater accounts for 96% of unfrozen freshwater. In Latin America, according to the Latin American Water Tribunal (TLA, 2004), 33% of the world’s renewable water resources were found in this region, which makes Latin America the continent with the highest availability globally.
Market economy, extractivism, and death
At present it is the proposal of the development and commercial model, based on the market, that makes water a commodity. Extractive companies, in all their modalities, are the main causes of the destruction of the planet, in vital liquid and biodiversity. At the same time, they generate conflict in the populations, resulting in criminalization and murders of the defenders of the territories[1]. The hydroelectric plants with the reservoirs produce displacement of the population and dispossession of their heritage.
Water crisis, climatic migration
The causes that affect the quality of life of the population in our towns make families seek out decent places to live and coexist in tranquility. Families are forced to migrate for social and environmental reasons. Migration in our towns is increasing symmetrically with the increase in the causes that generate injustice, such as impunity, the cost of the basic food basket, unemployment, and the violence of organized and institutional crime. The same is true with regard to environmental injustice, caused by extractive companies, monocultures, and the lack of treatment of toxic chemicals that end up polluting and making water scarce in the territories, forcing families to migrate from the country or to be displaced internally.[2]
In 2007, the “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change” defined the term “environmental migrant,” identifying climate change and water stress among the causes of forced migration.[3]
Working Group 1 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), with the August 2021 report, presented the sixth report, where it continues to state that global warming (1.1°C) is due to the greenhouse effect (GHE), which comes from human activities.[4]
This climate crisis was added to the situation of the global public health crisis, generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which revealed the different situations of social and environmental injustices already present. This situation of global crisis has repercussions on the violation of the human rights of the vulnerable majorities. That is why the IPCC Group says about this reality that “the dynamics of the climate crisis, poverty, food insecurity, conflicts, and forced migration are increasingly interconnected and mutually reinforcing, leading to more and more people fleeing in search of safety and protection.”[5]
As we have already highlighted a little in this article, the situation of the great impoverished majorities has its causes in an established unjust system such as the market economy and extractivism, having neoliberalism (left or right) as its ideological approach. Social injustice and the water crisis are the same reality of environmental justice, since “climatic migrations are part of forced population movements.”[6]
The deterioration of the common home is increasing, and “these impacts are undermining food security or access to water and indirectly influence many people to have to leave their homes in search of better living conditions.”[7] The report of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) worries us when they publish that “in 2020 a new record for internal displacement was broken, as 40.5 million new displacements were reached in 149 countries and territories.”[8] We experienced this dramatically in the Central American region with the passage of hurricanes “Eta and Iota” (2020), which still have a great human cost.
“The human environment and the natural environment are degraded together” (LS 48)
The encyclical Laudato Si’ denounces the water crisis, saying that “while the quality of available water is constantly deteriorating, in some places the tendency to privatize this resource is advancing. Scarcity has been turned into a commodity regulated by the laws of the market…” (LS 30). For the Pope, the water crisis is linked to social problems such as the drama of forced migration. What happens to the earth, and to the water, happens to humanity: we live in the same house, we need the same water (LS 49–50).
“Sister Water”
From our perspective and spirituality, this reality of the water crisis that has repercussions in the increase of forced migration challenges us as believers of the God who gives Life. Therefore, it is about recreating a way of relating to water and to all creation that is friendly and not conquering, much less predatory. In this sense, we are enlightened by the relational proposal of Saint Francis of Assisi, who treated water as a “sister,” as a creature equally created by God himself, of whom we humans are the image and likeness. Today Sister Water calls us to be a single family, united by our fragile and beautiful creation, good and deciduous, a single cosmic fellowship, returning to the origin of Creation, to the original intention, as expressed by the Word made Life. Caring for and defending “the water sister” is caring for and protecting the migrant who is leaving their mark on this common home where we all live as creatures.