The BG News

Issue date: 4/11/07 Section: Campus

Peter Gleick: President of the Pacific Institute for Studies

In the United States, there are simple water privileges that we take for granted everyday.

A cold swig of water, straight from the tap into a tall glass. A scalding hot shower where water beads drip down the body rushing into the drain below.

And while in our daily lives we may not see the problems that arise when clean water is not available, it affects millions of our global neighbors.

This year's Edward Lamb Peace Lecture, "Water and Conflict in the 21st Century: Fears and Hopes," addressed the issues pertaining to national and international water crisis.

Lecturer Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development Environment and Security, addressed a crowd of around 200 students, faculty and community members on the history of water conflict.

Since the dawn of civilization, people have been dealing with sharing, sanitizing and distributing fresh water.

"Fresh water is connected to everything we care about, frankly," Gleik said.

In the early stages of civilization, humans dumped waste into streams and let the natural hydrological cycle do the cleaning work. But as more people put more waste into the streams, disease made the water unsafe to drink and useless to the civilians.

Now, as the global population climbs toward 7 billion, water sanitation is still a major concern.

Today, 40 percent of the world's population does not have access to clean and safe drinking water. The goal expressed by the United Nations was to reduce that amount by half by the year 2015, but as that date approaches, that goal appears unreachable, Gleick explained.

"As our population grows, there will be more and more conflict over water ... people don't think about it because we have so much water here," said Gary Silverman, director of Environmental Health.

There is no single answer to our water problems, and finding solutions to water problems will require integrated thinking from different groups.

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