World Water Day 2024

‘Water for Peace’ - World Water Day 2024

Leveraging water for peace - What does this mean?

Because water has become the next commodity on the economic scale, garnering huge profits for countries, organizations, and industries, it is now also a source of conflict across borders. On this day of remembrance and celebration for the sacred gift of water, a human right for all, we cry out against its misuse and abuse.

153 countries share water basins, yet only 24 of these countries have cooperation agreements. Water scarcity is increasing because of overuse and climate crisis. Water and its infrastructures have become targets and weapons of war.

The United Nations’ theme for World Water Day, March 22, 2024, is Leveraging Water for Peace.  Check out the information provided in this UN Factsheet World Water Day | United Nations where water is proclaimed as a tool for peace.

At the UN Water Convention in 2023 some tools for peace were cited:

• At the community level: bring together different water users around a common cause providing an entry point for dialogue, reconciliation, and peacebuilding.

Might I suggest that this is what active Canadians did in creating a dialogue with government over the privatization of water.

•        At the national level: provide a starting point for coordination across interests.

•        At the transboundary level: provide a starting point for communication and broader cooperation. For example, out of approximately 400 internationally shared aquifers there are only 5 where international agreements exist.

An integrated and inclusive approach suggests that “Water can be a catalyst for peace at all governance levels. Water cooperation across borders and sectors will speed up progress across Sustainable Development Goals, including delivering safe drinking water and sanitation, enhancing food security, sustaining healthy livelihoods and ecosystems, helping to address resilience to climate change, contributing to disaster risk reduction, providing renewable energy, supporting cities and industry, and fostering regional integration and peace.” [i]

Knowing the facts awakens us to a path forward. Let’s keep alert to places where power and control of water resources and infrastructure sever relationships and use our voices to leverage equality and bring peace.

-Sister Loretta Manzara, CSJ

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[i] UNECE and UNESCO (2023), Concept paper for interactive dialogue 4 at the UN 2023 Water Conference: Water for Cooperation: Transboundary and International Water Cooperation, Cross Sectoral Cooperation, including Scientific Cooperation, and Water across the 2030 Agenda: https;//sdgs.um.org/conferences/watr2023/events/interactive-dialogue-4.

World Water Day - March 22, 2022

Seeing with new eyes

Image: Unsplash/Silvan Schuppisser

I turn on the tap and water flows. But where does it come from?

London, Ontario's water system and supply of clean water come from both Lake Huron and Lake Erie, through a network of treatment plants, reservoirs, and pumping stations made up of more than 1,620 kilometres of pipes.

Being a city gal, I am used to the fact that water from the Great Lakes moves through pipes to purification stations and then into my tap. I have childhood memories of visiting relatives at their summer cottage where my aunt pumped water from the well directly into her sink. That water comes from aquifers.

Aquifers are geological formations of rocks, sands and gravels that hold water. This water feeds springs, rivers, lakes, and wetlands, and also seeps into the ocean depending on the geographical area. The water accumulates from rain and snowfall.

This year for World Water Day, March 22, 2022, we are invited to celebrate and recognize the importance of groundwater (water from aquifers) – the invisible gift that supports drinking water, sanitations systems, farming, industry, and ecosystems.

People who draw drinking water from private wells do not currently have any enforceable safeguards. “Over 40 municipal drinking water systems throughout Ontario are not covered by the Clean Water Act.” See: https://watercanada.net/feature/ontario-drinking-water-safe

The data sheet for World Water Day 2022 states that almost all liquid freshwater in the world is groundwater, and it will play a critical role in adapting to climate change. Life will not be possible without groundwater.

So how do we protect groundwater?

Contribute to the voices opposing the provincial government’s permit to Blue Triton to continue to take 3.6 million liters of water daily from the Aberfoyle Plant, and 1.1 million liters of water per day from the Hillsbourgh location.

Read Wellington Water Watchers, World Water Day Statement: Wellington Water Watchers.

To avoid depletion requires policies on energy, land use and irrigation.

For a good news story, read what is developing among the Dairy Farmers of Canada: https://dairyfarmersofcanada.ca/en/who-we-are/our-commitments/sustainability/water.

World Water Day each year reminds us to cherish water as gift, as medicine,  as sacred, and to ensure that water is available for everyone without becoming a commodity.

2 billion people live without access to safe water. Let’s support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #6 to achieve water and sanitation for all by 2030.

Raise a glass and look with new eyes!

World Water Day 2022

-Sister Loretta Manzara, csj

We are a Blue Community.

World Water Day in London

Several Sisters of St. Joseph participated in the World Water Day rally in London, on March 22, 2019.  The aim of the rally was threefold: to protest the poor condition of drinking water in First Nations communities; to highlight the infringement of First Nations water rights in the water bottling process; to stress environmental issues related to water.

The rally began at eleven a.m. in Victoria Park amid drumming and prayers. The event was organized by the Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians (AIAI). Sister Sue Wilson csj, in her opening remarks, explained how joining in activities such as World Water Day increases awareness: “When the Sisters of St. Joseph became a Blue Community, it was a wider effort to deepen our relationship with the watershed.  And we are learning from Indigenous neighbours to reconnect with the watershed as a source of life, as relation, as a spiritual connection”.

Following the introductory rites, the participants marched through downtown London and arrived at Harris Park where a moving tobacco ceremony ensued. Each person was given tobacco to be held in the left hand.  We formed silent intentions and were invited to release the tobacco into the swiftly flowing Thames River.  This sacred action was a testimonial that allowed The Creator to receive anyone’s pain, suffering and injustice.  Interestingly, it was noted that the wind calmed and all was silent as we cast our offering into the water.

The day’s events were both prayerful and solemn. The friendship experienced among the group left a lasting imprint upon Mother Earth as we danced together hand in hand to the beat of the sacred drum.

- Linda Parent csj

- Jean Moylan csj

Appreciating Water

When I lived in Jamaica from 1993 to 2007, our water supply would frequently be cut off and though it was often for a matter of hours/overnight as opposed to days on end, still the impact was felt.

I never appreciated water so much as when I heard the happy gurgling sound when the taps were turned on again when the water began to flow.

It was in my heart and mind to somehow get involved in protecting the precious resource of water once I had returned to Canada. In Canada I don’t believe I ever had to go without water and the preciousness of it faded into the background.

Nevertheless, I was thrilled when our congregation of the Sisters of St Joseph in Canada decided last year to give a substantial donation to Water First (water first.ngo) towards an internship program for indigenous youth regarding how to monitor the water supply to First Nations reserves- one small step in water protection and promoting water as a human right.

I was also glad when our congregation decided to become a Blue Community   and hire a Coordinator to assist us.

Fast forward to today. I just returned from a global witnessing trip in Dominica with 2 other Sisters of St Joseph (Sr Ann MacDonald, pictured above) where we stayed with two Presentation Sisters and an Associate of the Presentation Sisters who minister there. While there, a crew working on the roads in the re-building of Dominica after the devastating destruction unleashed by Hurricane Maria in 2017, ruptured a water main and we were six women without water for 24 hours. 

This inconvenience is minor when compared to water issues that millions of people face every day around the world.

I was once again reminded of the precious gift that water is and my/our own responsibility to do all we can to reduce our use of water and to guard against contamination of water.

Our lives and those of the generations after us depend on it.

- Sr. Nancy Sullivan, csj

The Sisters of St. Joseph are also proud supporters of the incredible work that Water First does. Please visit their site to see the impact they are making - Everyone deserves access to safe, clean drinking water.

When Green Becomes Blue

Through our Federation, the Sisters of St. Joseph have become the 29th Blue Community in the world, joining with many others whose goals are: to have water and sanitation recognized as human rights, to phase out and then ban the sale of bottled water at municipal events and public facilities, and to promote publicly financed, owned and operated water and waste water services.

These communities are provided with the tools to fight the privatization of water and promote the human right to water. This project builds on nearly two decades of Water Watch work, in coalition with many other groups to promote and protect public water. Blue Communities in Canada, there are now 13 of them, is an initiative of the Council of Canadians and CUPE.

When Paris joined the Blue Communities Project on World Water day, 2016, Maude Barlow congratulated them saying “the global water crisis is getting more serious by the day and it is being made worse by the corporate theft and abuse of water.” And we all know of the problems our Aboriginal communities are experiencing with water that is not safe for drinking. Over 100 communities are under water advisory and need to boil water for drinking. And mercury contaminated water is major news and is a shame for Canada.

Indeed, water scarcity is a global concern! In my recent awareness visit to India at the invitation of SOPAR, I came to a deep appreciation of water which we in Canada take so much for granted. In India, water is not lacking so much as it’s not potable and the contaminants lead to serious illnesses. Small village communities have built filtration plants to purify the water. Doctors were asked if this was really necessary. Their conclusion was that a village that had 5 doctors now only needed one. (see www.sopar-balavikasa.org)

During her time in South Sudan on an awareness trip with Canadian Aid for South Sudan, Sister Joan Atkinson found similar realities. There they also have to deal with water-borne diseases causing illness and death. Taught by a Canadian scientist, they fill specific types of plastic bottles with water and let the ultra-violet rays of the sun purify the water. Families using this system are free of water-borne illnesses and are much healthier. I saw this same process being used while I was in Bolivia.

In a recent article I read by Sister Sue Wilson, she writes “Water is indeed for our use and to sustain life but from an integral ecological perspective it is more than an “object for human use.”

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH WATER?

Sister Sue quotes Denise Nadeau who writes “my journey to unlearn this objectification of water and experience water as a living relative continues to be a long one.” As Sisters of St. Joseph, we are called into deep relationship with all creation, and I think of St. Francis of Assisi who addressed water as “Sister Water.”

Mary Mettler, CSJ
On behalf of the Federation Ecology Committee

The Federation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Canada is made up of three Congregations: The Sisters of St. Joseph in Canada, The Sisters of St. Joseph of Sault Saint Marie and The Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto.