While browsing youtube I came across this very thought provoking documentary on depleting water resources of our cities. Even though the documentary talks about Karachi in specific, the problem of potable water and conservation is equally valid for any other city and town of Pakistan. According to current estimate, Pakistan is world’s 6th most populous country taking over Russia for that spot in 2006. With all this increasing population, lack of development of potable water resources, WATER is set to become the most precious commodity in coming years. It will truly become what in literature, people have been calling ‘aab-e-hayaat’.
I never contended what Islam instructs us regarding water conservation or for that matter the whole environment itself. Neither did I intend to berate the research availiable through the link provided by you. As I wrote in my earlier comment ” Whatever Islam says about water conservation, we are still going to misinterpret it and use it to our own selfish interest”. The problem is with our twisted interpretations of this beautiful religion. Islam is about follwing the ” middle “path so that we do not transgress and trample what belongs to all.
Ahsan, While I agree with your suggestions, I don’t about keeping Islam out of this. I stumbled on this very serious piece of research on water conservation, and it very beautifully tried to interpret what the prophet and the Quran said about water conservation. Another point to prove that this religion is not just an abstruse concept, but caters to the day to day life and cares for the well being of all living on this earth. It is all tied together.
Whatever Islam says about water conservation, we are still going to misinterpret it and use it to our own selfish interest. We have already played havoc with all the “halal” wild species on the so called “Islamic” part of this God’s earth. We have so many “Islamic hadiths” making it obligatory for us to hunt anything halal when it is seen. So please let us keep religion out of this topic. We already have a Zakir Naik stressing everyone to eat more and more “gosht” so that all the forests are converted into grasslands and we can get ready for the seventy “hoors” in the hereafter by eating more and more “gosht” here. So much for our twisted interpretation of a beautiful religion.
A few radical suggestions.
1. Ban/close all mineral water companies and we will have clean drinking water gushing out of every tap in Pakistan. We cannot have clean drinking water for public when the privileged few have access and means to “7 glasses of Nestle everyday”
2.Strict penalities for anyone using a hundred gallons of potable water for washing the damn cars and the porch and flooding half the street.
3. Educating the “haves” lot to eat less so that they s_ _ _ less and then they dont have to flush out their filthy s_ _ _ using 10-15 litres of clean potable water. On average, a person flushes out 100+ litres of water.
The amount of water that is wasted by a single affluent house hold is sufficiet for the consumption needs of a small village.
http://www.emro.who.int/Publications/EMHJ/0504/16. htm
Titled, “Water conservation through Islamic public awareness in the Eastern Mediterranean Region”, read what Islam says about water conservation.
The central issue with water, not mentioned in this post, was that global warming is rapidly shrinking the glaciers which supply water to all of South Asia’s river systems. Scientists have become alarmed at the very rapid retreat of glaciers in the Himalayas and have concluded that this could eventually lead to the drying up of all major river systems in the Indian Subcontinent (including the Indus in Pakistan). Nobody is sure about how long it will take for the glaciers to disappear because we are not certain about the world’s rate of warming, but it has happening now at a stunning rate and we could see the very worst scenarios of an uninhabitable and entirely desiccated subcontinent within our own lifetimes.