By Barbara and Hans Zuuring, Maryknoll Affiliates
Blessed Trinity Parish, Missoula

Water is essential for health and well-being. Unfortunately, about 18 percent of the world’s population (1.2 billion people) lack access to safe drinking water. March 22, World Water Day, highlights the United Nations’ International Decade for Action, “Water for Life” 2005-2015, during which time the U.N. hopes to halve, “by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.”

This year, World Water Day also falls on Holy Saturday. When the baptismal waters are blessed as a sign of God’s grace and new beginnings, we call this water “holy.”

Water is a sign of the Divine presence and sacred to peoples of all faiths. It is both a holy symbol and an essential element of life. Our baptismal commitment calls us to live in the service of others and to manifest the fullness of life that God promises for all of creation.

At the very dawn of creation, God’s Spirit breathed on the waters, making them the wellspring of all goodness. Life emerges from the waters and water sustains all life. All the water now in circulation was here when the planet Earth was formed.

Our relationship with water, according to Catholic Social Teaching, demands that we conserve and manage our fresh water and oceans for the common good, so that all human life might flourish. This heritage is the responsibility of all people regardless of race or socio-economic status.

Water, its purity, nurturing power, free-flow and availability, is under attack.

In our generation, we have seen water governed by trade agreements that treat it as a commodity that can be bought, sold and distributed.

Privatization of water has meant that water is not accessible to millions of poor people around the globe due to its high cost. Bottled water, a private enterprise, does not serve the good of the entire community. No company or political party can claim to own water because water is the common heritage of all creation. We call for a more just distribution of water for all God’s people.

Water brings life, but it can also bring death. Waters that are polluted with chemicals, pesticides and sewage bring disease and death. Because of water-related illness such as malaria and diarrhea, 2 million children die each year. Water-related diseases affect the poor disproportionately.

Due to global climate change, deforestation and an ever-increasing world population, numerous regions across the world face moderate to severe droughts. The U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) warns that the relentless drought across East Africa is deepening. Klaus Toepfer, executive director of UNEP, says “What has dramatically changed in recent decades is the ability of nature to supply essential services like water and moisture during hard times. This is because so much of nature’s water and rain supplying services have been damaged, destroyed or cleared.”

What needs to be done and what is being done with respect to safe drinking water? We need “edu-action,” meaning that through education, we can take informed actions.

For instance, if children are taught proper hygiene in developing nations, they become health educators for their families, and household vulnerability to deadly diarrhea diseases can be reduced by at least 40 percent.

Further, women produce between 60 and 80 percent of the food in most developing countries and they need to be involved in management decisions and planning for water resources.

Numerous water projects are being conducted across the globe. An agriculture program supported by Catholic Relief Services has brought small-scale irrigation systems to Ethiopia and other areas. Maryknoll priests, sisters and lay missioners are engaged in various Latin American and African countries to stop the privatization of water services, improve drinking water supplies and set up irrigation projects to help small farmers grow better crops.

PlayPumps International, together with Save the Children USA, has launched a campaign to bring clean, safe water to 4,000 schools and communities in Africa. Merry-go-rounds are used as pump heads together with an aboveground storage tank to produce clean drinking water that does not require village women to travel great distances for drinking water.

The U.N.’s education, science and cultural organization, UNESCO, has initiated a water assessment program on the world’s freshwater resources which will be published in the World Water Development Report. As community groups, governments and international bodies awaken to the crisis, remedial policies such as “Water for Life” will continue to make steady progress.


Personal water reflection:

Fill a glass with drinking water and as you take each of seven sips, reflect on:

  • how it feels as it enters your mouth and you swallow.
  • our blue planet.
  • the water in your body.
  • the miracle of water (hydrogen joined with oxygen to form a liquid).
  • having to walk six hours barefoot in the midday heat to fetch the water in your glass. How have you taken water for granted?
  • your gratefulness for clean water.
  • the sacredness of water.

Finish the water in your glass and think of those who have no access to clean water.

Here are some excellent Internet resources dealing with water:



Justice Voices articles are coordinated by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development committee of the Helena Diocese.


Published in The Montana Catholic Online, Volume 24, No. 3, March 21, 2008.