Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:21):
Welcome to the Environmental Justice Lab. I am your host,
doctor Leslie Joseph. And today is World Water Day. It's
Worldwater Day, So in case you're not aware, today is
the day that the United Nations has deemed World Water
Day to bring attention and awareness to water issues water
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concerns all around the world. For this World Water Day,
the theme that they have for World Water Day is
Glacier preservation. They want everybody to know how important glaciers
are to the way water works around the world, how
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people rely on water, where they get their water from.
Lots of facts about glaciers and things on the website.
You can go look at it. If you're interested. There'll
be a link in a description. Go take a look.
But here's the thing. I'm not worried about glaciers right now,
not right now now. They are important, don't get me wrong,
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They're very important. If you don't know, seventy percent of
the fresh water in the world is in snow or
ices in the glaciers. Right in twenty twenty three, we've
lost more glaciers than in any other time in history.
It's true global warming. Climate change has really impacted how
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glaciers are being managed. How they are existing, and it's
causing problems. When glaciers melt, the sea level rises, which
is a problem if you live on the coast, if
you live in near water, it's a big problem. So
I'm not trying to minimize glaciers because they're very important
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and maintaining them and their integrity is critical to how
the water works around the world. But if you live
in Gaza right now, if you live in Sudan or
Congo right now, if you live if you live in Flint, Michigan,
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or some of these other towns in the United States,
if you live in Ukraine during this war, if you
live in any of these middly cern countries that are
under siege right now, in wars right now, Syria and
Yemen and Somalia, all these places, you're not worried about
the glaciers, are you. You're not because you just need
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water to survive today. You need water for your family today.
And so that's what I want to bring to your attention.
You may not be aware of this, you may not
have thought about it, but without water, none of you
would exist right now. You wouldn't be able to survive
without it. We need it and not just for drinking.
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That gets a lot of attention in the news. Drinking
water quality, drinking water sources, drinking water treatment, all those
things are important. But guess what we do more with
water and just drink it. We cook with it, we
clean with it, we wash our hands with it. We
enjoy the environment when there's water around. We grow crops
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with it, agriculture, We run our businesses and our companies
and organizations with water. Water is essential to life, It
is essential to existing. It's essential for every component of
our existence to function and to be livable. We have
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to have water. And so I want to bring to
everybody's attention on this World Water Day that, particularly when
you're thinking environmental justice stuff like I do, water is
essential and it is not equitably available around the world.
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It just isn't. The quality depending on who you are
and where you live, can be vastly different. It can
be incredibly challenging to get the kind of quality water
you need for whatever you're trying to do. And so
we all know the facts. If you live in a
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predominantly black or brown community, if you live out in
the rural areas, if you live in a place that
is solely reliant on another source of water to come
to you, You're going to be the great disadvantage. It's
just the reality. And I don't want to get to
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alarmist here, but with the scarcity that we're seeing in
water resources, through the climate change, due to overconsumption, through
the industrialization, all of these elements, I think, and you can,
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you know, you can question me on this idea, but
I think that the next great global conflict will be
over water. People be fighting and going to war over water.
Who controls this river, who controls this lake, Who can
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controls the water that comes in, Who controls the ground
water underneath the earth. That's going to be where the
conflicts come. Because without water, you cease to exist, you
cease to function like a society. Because water is essential.
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You can't cook your food without it. You can't wash
your clothes without it, you can't clean your hands without it,
take a shower without it. What about when you go
to the bathroom. You gotta clean the bathroom, make sure
there's no germs, no disease spreading. You can't do that
without water. You have to have water. And so please
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remember on this world Water Day as you wake up
in the morning, and you brush your teeth. You just
turn the faucet, the water comes out, you brush your teeth,
you jump in the shower, turn the water on, you
take a shower. Nice. You go to the kitchen or
wherever you make your meals, and you know you're boiling
the water for whatever you're trying to cook. If if
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it's oat meal, maybe it's some other kind of meal
that you're preparing for the day. You're using water. You're
filling up your water bottle so you can take the
water with you to drink later in the day. Imagine
life without that. Imagine life without that amenity, the ability
to just get water whenever you need it. Because there
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are people all around the world who don't have that luxury,
who walk for miles and miles and miles with a
bucket hoping to get some type of water, whether it's
clean or not, not even a consideration, just some water.
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There are people who have gone days in weeks without
clean water to drink, people who are living off of
of contaminated rivers and salty water sources who have no
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clue how they're going to get through from day to
day because the water is not available. It's just not available.
I wrote an article came out about a month ago
talking about the environmental impact of the war on Gaza.
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And when you read the article that I wrote, or if
you read anything that's related to that kind of topic,
the first thing you'll read about is the impact of
the war on the water supply. In the Gaza stript,
you will see that ninety not well, ninety seven percent
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of the water that's available in Gayza right now is undrinkable.
Ninety seven percent water wells destroyed, water connection is destroyed,
water treatment plants destroyed, de hyalination plants destroyed. There is
nothing there, and so when you have no water, it's
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not a surprise. Disease starts spreading, malnutrition, poor hygiene, all
of these things cascade from a lack of water. And
it's the same in any other conflict zone. You can
just pick your conflict zone, pick your refugee camp, pick
your part of the world where there's an ongoing war
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going on, and you will see that water is at
the middle of fueling whatever crisis is there, if it's
a disease outbreak, if it's some type of concern for
human health, water is right there, and it always is.
It always will be, because that's how important it is.
And in many cases, people will weaponize the water they're
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restricted on purpose. They'll cut off the supply to choke
out the population that they're trying to fight against. Happens
all the time. It's a war crime. You can't do that,
but people do it because that's how critical water is
to life. And so on this World Water Day, go
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to the website, to the UN website. Read about the
glaciers because they are important. And if you step back
from all the conflicts around the world and thought more
globally about water and its availability in general, glaciers would
be a very top priority in terms of trying to
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preserve them and think of ways to manage a water
supply and to reduce the impact of climate change. But
we don't live in normal times, do we. We just don't.
There are too many wars going on. There are too
many children, too many babies who don't have the water
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that they need, too many moms, too many girls spending
their whole life walking to a water source and back
from the water source just to do it again the
next day. For their lives, they're not going to school,
they're not contributing as far as working goes. They're not
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at home raising their children, they're not contributing to their
communities in society. They're consistently walking hours and hours and
hours to get water. And so that's the kind of
world that we live in. That's the kind of world
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that billions of people have to endure because they don't
have the water that they need, they don't have the
access to the water that they should have that I have.
I'm gonna leave this studio. I'm gonna walk around the
corner and I'm gonna drink some water from water fountain.
I'm gonna use the bathroom and wash my hands and sink,
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dry it off, and then go do something else. I'm
gonna go home. I'm gonna say I've had a hard
day at work. I'm gonna take a shower, no problem.
And depending on how I feel, I might take a
hot shower, which means I'll turn the water on and
I'll wait let that cold water get out so I
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can get some hot water because I want to take
a shower with some hot water. Like that's just how
much privilege and how much how many resources we have
available here as opposed to some other part of the
world where if they could get just a cup of
clear water, they would be overjoyed. They would celebrate the
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idea that there is clean water around them. That's what
we have here. It's World Water Day. So think about yourself.
Think about what kind of water you have available to you.
If you have water available to you that you can
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just get to right away, hey, thank God for that water.
Thank him. I'm so glad that I have access to
this water. If you don't have access to clean water,
to water that you don't believe is safe to drink,
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safe to use, why is that. Let's think about that.
Let's interrogate why that is. And my guess is it's
an environmental justice issue. My guess is you've been neglected,
You've been cut off. You've been excluded from the population
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that enjoys clean water whenever they want it. And while
you're thinking about it, think about your neighbors too. Think
about people that you know, people that you interact with.
Do they have water where they get their water from?
Do they drink it? We have this thing. It's interesting
in America where people will live in different communities that
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have poor water quality. It's hard to drink, hard to
get down that has different colors. But they say it's
safe because it's not contending with bacteria that will make
you sick. And we say, okay, fine, I don't want
to drink it. And what happens They start buying bottled
water from the store. They go to the store, buy
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bottles and bottles and bottles of water at a cost
to bring home to use, while they're being charged for
the water that's in their home when they live there.
It's now you have basically two water bills that you're
consistently paying over and over again because your community's water
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supply is not drinkable and you can't continue to use
it the way you would normally use it. And so
you already low income, you're already disadvantaged. You're spending whatever
little money you have to go buy water that they
should be providing you already. That's not how that works.
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And so if you're in that situation where you find
yourself buying water even though you know you live in
a place that should have water made available to you,
that's not safe, that tastes awful, that discolored. We need
to have a conversation with your elected officials about why
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that's the case, because you shouldn't not be spending your
hard earned money buying water that they should be providing
you that they charge you for every month. So I
know a lot of people are in that situation too.
It's World Water Day. So whatever your water situation is,
think carefully about it. Ask yourself the questions, and then
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if you don't like the answers, find out who is
responsible for situation that you're in, call them, go to
the meetings, go to the town halls, whatever it takes
to get your water right, because you should not have to.
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Water is a human right. Water is something that is
made available to everyone everywhere, regardless of who you are.
There should be no sense that you don't get the
type of water that you need to survive from day
to day. And I know there is a lot of
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injustice in the world that fuels the disparities and water
quality across the continents across the globe. I know that
I know what's happening in these parts of the world.
I know that if I flew in to some of
these places, I would have water, but the people who
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live there wouldn't. I've seen that. I know that if
I go to these other countries and walk around. I'll
be treated differently and be given more access because I
have an American passport, I speak English, and the people
who live there, who are indigenous to that country would
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not have those same would not have the same access
and the same resources made available to them. I know
that I've stayed in hotels and other countries where they
would actually bring in trucks of water into the hotel
where we're staying because they know the water is not drinkable,
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they know what we would get sick if we drink it,
and so instead of us having to go buy water
because the water's not good the country, the hotels, the
management brought in water trucks, filled up tanks on site,
and distributed water to us. That's what happens in a
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lot of places. And it's not right that I would
have that access in people who actually lived there just wouldn't.
And so I'm going to keep it short today. I
just want you all to think about the fact that
water is a human right, that it should be made
availble to everyone, and one of the primary ways that
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people are disenfranchised and treated unjustly and unfairly is through
the water systems that are built and maintained around them.
We need more equity, We need more just water systems
and water access for everyone. That's what we need on
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this water Day, this World Water Day, that's what we need,
and that's how we should think when we think about
water in our society. And so that's it. Thank you
so much for listening to this episode of the Environmental
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Justice Lab. Where we are for the people and for
the planet. I will see you next