Water

Being an environmentalist is always a difficult task in a third world country like ours (I live in Beirut, Lebanon by the way). Being treated as stingy because you own a 2.0L engine car instead of a 4.4L engine SUV is something you learn to live with without wasting time trying to explain to ‘them’ the reason behind it, the benefits to the environment or the efficiency concepts.

I am not environmentalist by any means, I am just an environment friendly person, and I guess I have always been. The difference you say? well an environmentalist is a crusader toward a cause, be it water, air pollution, recycling, etc… These people are committed to an organization and they do awareness programs and activities (something like Greenpeace). Definitely NOT me!
On the other hand, an ‘environment friendly’ is someone who respects the environment and abides to some basic rules that help make our planet a cleaner place.

This brings us to the topic of this blog post: WATER.

Over the last couple of months I got the chance to view few documentaries that kind of left a certain impression on me. Of course we have all seen the Global Warming documentaries that were hyped few years back, specifically The 11th Hour (narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio) and The Inconvenient Truth (narrated by Al Gore). Well the hype of the recent documentaries has been regarding water. For this I highly recommend that you get your hands on the below 3 gems of Documentary filmmaking.

1. Blue Gold: World Water Wars an amazing release that won several awards. It focuses on the issues of water companies like Suez, Nestle and Vivendi to name just a few. It also tackles the issue of wars that are to arise in the future because of water (this is particularly important for us living here in the Middle East).
2. FLOW (For Love Of Water). A crucially important documentary about technologies and methodologies that are being used to recycle and benefit from water.
3. HOME. This is a major release of aerial photography of the planet with a background narration acting as an awareness message. This film is shot by Yann Arthus-Bertrand and produced by Luc Besson. You’ll be hearing a lot about that movie.

Now I don’t know the detailed reasons behind having countries in the middle east established the way they are today. I was never good in history. But all I can say is that back then, the person who did the border demarcation by defining the 10452 km2 Lebanon that we know today surely caused us plenty of trouble. Not only he gave us neighbours such as Israel and Syria (that alone is enough for having trouble), but he made sure that Lebanon is rich in water surrounded by dead thirsty countries. Hence I suggest to any Lebanese to get hold of the above documentaries.

I truly realize that an organization focusing on water does not exist here. Water is always part of a much broader topic such us pollution or recycling, or environment. I believe it is time for making a water brigade that can act as a Think Tank focusing on water resources and research. For once I feel I can help and be committed to such an organization if it ever sees the light. If someone starts acting now I am sure that we can perform great achievements in the future to benefit not only the population but even to influence the politics that will be made in the region. Now the irony is that I will be long gone by the time the water situation would become that dramatic, but at least the generations to come (our children) could at least have a better chance at survival.