From the River Region, I watched the government’s campaign called Save the Water on television the other day. It is paradoxical, because in a region that already by name overflows the abundance of the water resource, its inhabitants are increasingly aware of how important it is to make a change to take care of this vital element. A campaign has not been necessary, because people perceive it, feel it, know it.
According to the Atlas of Water carried out by the Ministry of Public Works and the Directorate General of Waters in 2016, water that is destined for human consumption, in its different uses, borders 8%, with the other 92% being the demand of the mining sectors , industrial and mainly agricultural. Just by looking at this data you can see that the focus should not be on generating a kind of collective terror asking the population to limit the time of their showers or to reuse the water with which they cook, because the real changes, if they want to make , point in another direction.
Injecting economic resources constantly, to buy water in cistern trucks or to buy animal fodder, for people suffering from this dramatic situation is a palliative that they certainly appreciate, but it is not a basic solution.
Delivering one hundred billion pesos to technify irrigation, will not deliver one more drop of water to the system, it will only increase the irrigation area that can be used.
We must take advantage of this momentous moment that we are living as a society, to have a real and substantive discussion without campaigns of terror and to really consider what our priorities are, so that we can make changes before it continues to be late. Our political class must at once address the issue of water without ideological prejudice. People do not understand that the bill amending the Water Code (Bulletin No. 7543-12) is still in the Senate Committee on Agriculture after so long. While people are asked to ration and care for water, the state and its authorities have not even been able to guarantee all the inhabitants of our country access to safe water and sanitation as an essential and indispensable human right.
I think maybe it is the opportunity to change our regulatory framework to generate an intuition that allows us to manage our water differently, but along with that it is also of paramount importance to analyze our priorities, to think about what is produces how much is produced and how it is produced, time to make great efforts, but of the real, the significant and not of bombastic campaigns that in practice have a little effect and are more like a drop of water in the middle of the desert.
The content poured into this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.
