ISU Reflection

Water is seen, under the UN as a basic human right, but why is it that so few people have access to fresh and clean drinking water? This was something that I didn't quite understand in countries such as Australia where they are a developed nation. In developing nations it would make sense as they don't have the money or the tools to provide themselves with water, but countries that do have the money still don't have access.  De-salination was a process that I knew worked but what I didn't realize was that it is so inefficient and very costly. Canada has the largest supply of fresh water and yet we don;t outsource this product. We keep it for ourselves and this actually made sense to me. The cost and fossil fuels that would be burned in order to transport water around the world in massive quantities seems silly. Someone made the point in class that why should we ship our valuable resources to countries where people are living on inhabitable land? It doesn't make sense. Though technology is advancing we haven't advanced enough to be able to create life's most valuable resource. Water. And why should we have to create it when it is already available for human beings but they are in the wrong location. It also isn't a logical solution to move half of the worlds population to areas that have water as the resources in these areas would then become sparse as the areas would overpopulate. It is a catch 22 where neither situation seems to make sense and what we thought of as a band-aid fix before has a whole new meaning to me. Ending the cycle of poverty with education won't end poverty if there is no sanitation and clean water as money that these educated children are making will always be spent on health care. There is no logical answer and this is a concern that I never even recognized before.