Flow

I recently finally got Netflix and have really been enjoying it. Recently, it recommended a documentary to me called Flow. Flow is, in short, about water. As we know from previous posts (here and here) and my attendance at World Water Day a few years back, this is kind of an important issue to me. So I immediately added Flow to my queue. I just finished it this morning and whoa do I have a lot to say.

In short, the movie is about the world water perspective. It's a documentary made up of 16 or so different issues and perspectives from around the world. There's no central narrator. Each segment is made up of interviews. The segments take place in four main countries: South Africa, Bolivia, the US, and India. The segments first cover many different water related topics including contaminated water (like the 20 million people in 25 states in the US who drink water contaminated with rocket fuel), the bottled water industry, the privatization of water, and the effect of damns. It of course gets political and talks about companies involved and the World Bank's influence on the issue. The documentary also shows various grassroots efforts around the world where people have taken on these issues and the adversity they have faced in doing so.

One of the central themes of the documentary is can anyone ever really own water? Historically, water as a transient resource has been the property of no one and everyone at the same time. No one has any more right to streams, rivers, and lakes then anyone else. One particular segment about the bottled water industry in Michigan horrified me. Basically, Nestle came in, set up a bottled water factory and started pumping millions of gallons of water a day out of the local aquifers. At absolutely no cost to them, with a ten year tax abatement, and a 99 year land lease for something like $160,000. They continued to pump at this rate despite a draught and effectively dried up local streams and wells. And they sold the product in the very community they were pumping in. The community saw no benefit from Nestle being there with the exception, I suppose, of the jobs created. Even worse perhaps is a story from India where contracts were signed to privatize stipulating that existing wells and water pumps built by the community had to either privatize (so they could charge people to use them) or be shut down. We're talking about common pumps that provide water to whole villages of the poorest of the poor. Does anyone else feel a little outraged by this?

Perhaps the most shocking news to me is that water is the world's third largest industry. Behind only electricity and oil. If you think water is unimportant, think again. In a way, water is the great equalizer. Every single one of us needs it. In the US, scarcity may not be our largest issue, but there are plenty of other big scary ones out there (like herbicides that cause male frogs to grow ovaries and are banned in Europe, including the country they're manufactured in). If you want more info, check out the Flow website. And please go watch this documentary!