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tv   Kulturzeit  Deutsche Welle  March 10, 2021 5:30am-6:01am CET

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discover who. subscribe to documentary on you tube. it's clear that. the world's most important resource a given for many regions but experts warn 2 thirds of the global population could face 4 shortages in the next 5 years like so often in life you only notice something when it starts becoming scarce and by that time it's often too late it's
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no longer as easy as turning on a tap for more and more people water a most precious resource welcome to made. there's a reason earth is known as the blue planet the majority of the globe is covered by water of course around 97 percent of it is so poor that i meet to a hospice said is fresh water but much of that is locked away in ice soil and the atmosphere that he bore of it is highly polluted or too deep underground to be extracted at an affordable cost just how 5 percent of all water is readily accessible from lakes rivers and aquifers water scarcity it's one of the most serious risks we face and the problem is growing. new deserts are emerging forests are drying up and we're still wasting water. the regions marked here in dark red are places where water is extremely scarce and sources are drying up pale
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red and orange indicate areas where water scarcity is only slightly less critical. delhi in india the southern part of the city. water tankers supply poor neighborhoods but only come once a week. if. they can get out of the let back in line or like water is so scarce some mornings there are so many people you would think there's a fair on everyone is struggling to fill can see that there are arguments fights even accidents water is our biggest problem of the well and we wish they would fix taps on all of our houses just like they've installed electricity on. delhi's main water supply is the moon a river but there hasn't been enough rainfall so its water level is low. the. problem in delhi today is the availability of clean water. a lot of work has gone
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into cleaning efforts. but there is an urgent need to address the issue of making more water available. as ation is taking place rapidly and with it the demand for water is rising just as fast as. in germany water is also becoming an issue. u.s. based electric car manufacturer tesla is planning to build its european factory in brandenburg outside berlin once it's operational it will consume millions of liters of water every day. water levels in this nearby lake have already sunk due to a series of hot dry summers the water at this point in the lake used to reach us moderns waste. he grew up here on lake strauss say. the prospect of the new test the factory worries him. we have to assume that climate
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change will continue and that there will be less rainfall and increased evaporation there's a vast amount of water consumption on top of about the water level will continue to fall as it has done in recent years it's likely to drop another few meters the ferry will no longer run then no one will be able to swim in the leg and bird breeding grounds will be destroyed. in the state of north rhine-westphalia there's concern about the drinking water supply at the gills invites a water works to thoughts on this that we understand the situation is fraught called for saying some of the lowest water levels since records began as a result of the past 3 dry summers. placed talking. sorcha gung. there's a slight improvement on the way but the rain from the past 2 months isn't enough and that's why there needs to be a lot more rain in the last few maybe even find. water is all part of the fun for tourists on the island of bali and as tourism grows so too does water consumption.
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bali residents are getting worried about their drinking water supplies. it's all because there's a shortage of sweet water we need to keep that within our system we need to keep it on the island we need to retain it push it into the ground and use it here where we need it the most bodies villagers have to travel long distances to get fresh water the next clean water is an hour walk from where this woman lives around the world 2000000000 people face huge problems when it comes to access to clean water leave it on a never e morning i go out to fetch water. for drinking water at home i fill up a large container and. i always bring the does he come. see the water and wash them every day at flight that you don't. have enough time to go to the water so several times
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a day to fetch water back home. what would global solutions look like one key aspect is utilizing waste water it's rarely treated in india but recycling it could ease demands. absolute water start up came up with an organic innovation filtering sewage water through plant matter and sand in their system break down any toxins in the water digesting them into harmless components and converting sewage into drinking water. the most important thing is the operational cost which. means being green we are not subject. so therefore i let the cost is the lowest so all in all it's a full sustainable. system and it is. already
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underway in germany as well where farmers are turning to crops which need little water researchers say climate change could make the long hot and very dry summers of recent years a permanent fixture that could lead to conflicting demands on water distribution the farmers association is already highlighting a potential flashpoint. because. obviously competition for water will increase for those relatively minor parts of the agricultural industry which use sprinklers meaning fruit and vegetable farms we need water for irrigation and obviously will have to weigh up the benefits of say watering garden. machine usage showering. cooling water and washing up water and ask if we couldn't use it better to produce food for us the world needs investment in water pipes on bali aid organizations have stepped in to help the villagers are
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also footing a share of the costs in projects like this where water will now if you come to uphill from the source to the village. when i went to new zeland in 969 everything was just so like heaven that you got home was not a tad cold water this beautiful and. everything was kind of all right so good so i thought well why couldn't i improve the situation over here so i do it in the state doesn't do much for infrastructure here it's the same as in many countries around the world. hot and cold running water a beautiful thing i never really thought about it though it industrialized countries like germany nobody really does things are very different in many other parts of
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the world where people can line up for hours just to get a few leaders at the precious stuff industrialized nations play a role in that scarcity as well that's because we eat large amounts of products like beef which require a huge amount of water to produce even if it isn't immediately apparent here's a breakdown of what some things cost in terms of h 2 o. . what is virtual water. let's take jeans as an example it takes around 8000 liters of water to make one pair that's $53.00 bathtubs full how come growing the cotton uses most of the water it's a very thirsty plant if the rains failed cotton fields have to be irrigated. and if the cotton is to be spun into jeans it also needs coloring rinsing and bleaching that pollutes a lot of water. virtual water is the unseen water that goes into the manufacturing of our product. nearly 900000 liters for one kilo of coffee 184
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liters for a kilo of tomatoes and about 15000 liters for one kilo of beef. in a country with adequate natural water resources high consumption isn't a problem unless of course a lot of it gets polluted but in many regions water is scarce or supplies have been depleted by producing certain goods the water level in the aral sea has dropped 18 meters because of irrigation in cotton fields it's turned parts of was back you start into a salty toxic waste land. tomatoes a cultivated in the parched reaches of southern spain using water piped into enormous greenhouses. and in brazil where there's a shortage of drinking water the country's huge coffee plantations are never short of a drop coffee is a major export for brazil. europeans import the as water guzzling goods and by extension all the virtual water needed to produce them seen from this
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perspective someone living in germany uses 3900 liters of water a day slightly over the global average but cooking showering and laundry make up only a small part of that most water used here is a virtual water hidden in the products around us. so it takes 8000 liters of water to make a pair of jeans and they use so much more washing them over the years staggering numbers pose some serious questions like what should water cost who should provide it is it morally acceptable for companies to profit from selling it to those who need it most of schmidt's when to talk with a woman involved in a project the discuss issues like that she things to fix the problem you have to hit people where really hurts their pocketbooks.
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sophia maria schmidt is a professional musician and a student of economics who thinks a lot about war. deprives most sean the price should go up until it hurts a bit once the december scimitar. schmidt research is water related issues the united nations resolution says there is a human right to safe access civil and affordable water. conquered the problem is that there is competition for the use of water if we want to introduce a basic right to water we have to consider which sectors which people are to enjoy that right we can identify 3 major players industry farming and private households which has priority who has more of a right to and who are less private individuals also depend on farming it's a very complex problem and we can't simply demand free water is a basic right. on the desk if you think that overall the worldwide water is too
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cheap. to believe there's never the population compared the united states and in the us water consumption per person per day is almost 300 liters that's a huge amount in germany by contrast it's $122.00. and then compare the prices here water is twice as expensive as to i'm so if the price is too low we waste water and that's exactly what's happening in the us. meat is involved in a project to take university in frankfurt that focuses on water and it's sustainable management worldwide they hold events and have invited representatives of nestle to attend the swiss multinational faces a lot of criticism for bottling and selling groundwater and for generating vast amounts of plastic waste. and again you for some teaching prison. sponsored by nurses is that a conflict of interest this is
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a feeling that there are many things to criticize but it's very important to engage with corporations it's all very well for academics to develop ideas but you can only achieve something if you work together with industry we should certainly view nestlé very critically but we also need to talk to it and find out what it can contribute. to most of us and that's kind of this little fountain is dried up schmidt sources of water around the world are going dry so they need to be maintained in a responsible fashion by the public and the private sector. even if a company slaps on a 10 percent profit margin water gets more expensive but given that it's our most important source of sustenance is it right for it to be provided by private companies from vending marsha. as long as the profit margin is not too high relative better per capita income so as long as people can afford it as long
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as it did before i had a low enough price so that they can buy as much as they need there's no problem it's the same with everything food clothes so there's always a profit margin and that's ok as long as we can afford it and as long as. there's an option. the only way to prevent a supply crisis is to raise the price of water so we come to value the resource for what it's really worth. yes. water is used in different ways in different parts of the world in europe for example agriculture industry and household suck up and spit out pretty much equal amounts but in north and south america farming makes up a much more sizeable fraction of total use and agriculture in asia and africa swallow around 80 percent of it just 15 percent is used by industry and the meat of 5 percent by private households in many mega-cities water is growing increasingly
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scarce in the philippine capital things have reached a critical stage now the government plans to build a dam to supply manila with 600000000 liters of water a day but it will uproot entire villages my colleague milan went to talk to some of them. the cali one river has always run through the share a modern mountain range in northeastern philippines but a controversial down project is set to change its course forever so this might be one of my last boat rides here. up ahead is the plan construction site for the call you walk down and all along this forest wall here a big tunnel will be built for the convenience of water. the water behind that could be up to 162 meters deep. that's more than enough to inundate communities like this one i visited the village of c.q.
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keeper russell which is closest to the dam site here are the indigenous dumas good people have lived alongside peasant farmers and fishers for generations many of them have put up signs opposing the dam as they face displacement and the loss of their livelihoods. i'm. i'm just wondering. when the flood comes how are we going to find. i mean we can't swim or dive for fish. we wouldn't be able to do any of that. so what's going to become of us. the dam is designed to boost the water supply in manila the philippine capital and the country's economic and political center. are actually just 40 kilometers south of the dam site but this urban jungle feels worlds away from their remote mountain communities. the authorities here say dwindling supply at manila's primary
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water sources is leading to shortages in a city that won't stop expanding. the equator they may go by then. she. cannot. meet the growing the bounds without the. the government argues that displacing thousands and destroying hundreds of hector's of forest land is justified as it will secure water for more than 12000000 people and that it's worth the taxpayer burden in the form of a contentious loan from china of more than $200000000.00. residents whose properties are set to be washed away by the dams construction are going to be taken care of according to official promises. but many here tell me that they're skeptical. why down on one of our own we've heard a lot of offers but we're not accepting them because we don't want to give away
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what's intended for the generations that come after us. we want them to live if really in our communities. what are they offering you a long period they say they'll give us money or they'll provide us with housing but we don't know where they will take us what if they relocate us to manila for example how would we survive when we're not used to life there. and indeed communities here live in accordance with the rhythms of the river and protect the environment it's a way of life that could be lost if the government has its way. now you know well these are our ancestral lands if they build the dam will lose our identity. and that's death for us not just of our physical bodies but our culture
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politics and economics. even if they do find somewhere for us to resettle we won't be able to live a nontraditional way dependent on nature. on the path of. the projects critics say they have history on their side the current initiative is a reincarnation of sorts of the even a few kilometers away which was never completed that project was shut down by community opposition more than a decade ago only ruined stand in the water. now if the even project had been continued there be water all around us as high as the walls which you see behind me the fact that the project was halted is a memory for many of the resistance that was successful but the outcome of their present day struggle is far from certain. the desire to preserve the river as it is clashes with their urge to change and control in
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a standoff that pits local people against the powerful government in the capital few expect to give way. the poor often lose out the most when it comes to water rights at the other end of the spectrum by the wealthy who have turned water into a luxury good bottle burra that can cost hundreds of times what it costs out of the tap it's billions and of course there are experts who say that like fine wine. has many nuances that detectable to the discerning palate our reporter matthew went to talk with people trying to be what he. so what it isn't just water. you know region and source give waters a distinctive character and. we're not talking about regular tap water but the kind that comes in bottles in germany that can up the price $100.00
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times. these people are taking a course to become water. they're doing a taste test identify the water without seeing the label on the bottle. you know nothing for us you know sodium tastes salty calcium makes the mouth feel dry magnesium makes the water taste sweet and bitter and then there are a bubbles carbon dioxide. that's often a giveaway if you know. the 9 day course costs over 2000 euros sommeliers have to register subtle differences and talk about them key if you want to sell lots of bottles. some of the students work for mineral water companies usually in the marketing or sales department they have to be able to explain to customers what makes their water special. last year the global bottled
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water market was worth $270000000000.00 euros average consumption 62 liters per person. is one of the students amin says he works for a mineral water company entire austria. it has its own spring and has invested millions in a new bottling plant. we're standing right on top of our source the aquifer that's been here beneath tile home for 25000 years waiting for us. in. damn water it contains a certain mix of minerals which is quantified it and the austrian law as a medicinal water in both austria and germany on a disc on the waters are actually considered drugs are regulated by the relevant authorities. you know we have what's known as
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a sodium potassium sulphate asadullah spring it's positive feature is that it contains a lot of lithium which lifts the mood significantly and. the timer hired us a brand was recently acquired by the billionaire much it's family which made its money with the energy drink red bull and knows all about marketing beverages. back at the taste test some of the students fluxed. distinguishing waters is no easy matter. that was difficult. yes very such tiny differences. here in the answers the 1st was number 21. not much sodium
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a little magnesium and a lot of calcium. and mastery of barely perceptible difference is makes the. posh water is big business worldwide. news international trade is growing all the time the country with the 2nd largest number of somalia is this taiwan more than 21. we need water to survive water can be very refreshing and for some it's a delicacy to be savored. i have to admit the only time i really save water is after a long workout or work but then i'm a stray it no one expects us to be connoisseurs of anything that's all for made today thanks for joining us to drop us a line on twitter or facebook as you know we're always keen to get your thoughts of course see you again today.
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