Review: Water Wars (2010)
Mark Leeper
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Focusing predominantly on Bangladesh Jim
Burroughs examines the water crises in countries facing
floods and drought. Bangladesh's problems are
particularly severe because they are heavily influenced
and in large part caused by damming and human
manipulation of rivers in India with insufficient
concern for the country that is so dependent on that
water downstream. Martin Sheen narrates a 55-minute
documentary examining a country that before long may be
simply washed away. This is a serious and worrying
documentary. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10
Second only to air, the substance that the human body most urgently
requires is water. Where clean drinking water is not available it
is impossible for people to live for long. Civilizations' fates
are frequently determined by the rivers that run through them.
Here in the United States the source of most of our water comes
from rain falling on our own country. The Mississippi contains
some water from Canada, but most of the Mississippi River Basin is
in the United States. The Brahmaputra River, on the other hand,
follows a course that starts in Tibet, continues through China,
flows into India, and then flows into Bangladesh where it is
desperately needed for survival. The river provides 65% of
Bangladesh's fresh water. That means that the river water has been
through two industrialized countries before it reaches Bangladesh.
Both India and China are building dams for electrical power and
general water control the river. Bangladesh is a small country
bordered on the west, north, and east by India. Its rivers are its
lifeblood and they consist entirely of water that has flowed
through India.
Lack of control of its water's sources places Bangladesh in a
particularly vulnerable position. Without consulting Bangladesh
the dams of India can cut off that water, causing drought, or open
the floodgates and release a flood on Bangladesh. As a very low-
lying country--essentially a delta--Bangladesh is subject to huge
floods and droughts, not from nature, not from global warming, but
from India controlling the waters running through its country. As
India opens its floodgates the floods frequently come without
warning in Bangladesh. When India closes its floodgates or
redirects its water, rivers in Bangladesh dry up and droughts
follow. But Bangladesh is not the only victim of less than careful
water management in India. Indian villages are also flooded and
inundated by rising waters caused by damming. People from
Bangladesh and from India politically protest India's water
management policies. Between water manipulation to the north and
rising water levels in the Bay of Bengal to the south low-lying
Bangladesh can flood covering as much as 70% of the country,
displacing large percentages of its population. Making matters
worse for the dry times, while the Brahmaputra supplies 65% of
Bangladesh's fresh water, in 2006 India announced a mammoth river-
interlinking project that would draw off 70% of that water.
Jim Burroughs spent two years in Bangladesh examining that
country's water issues and the increasingly political responses.
WATER WARS--subtitled WHEN DROUGHT, FLOOD AND GREED COLLIDE--was
the result of that study. To give his viewers a little more of a
feeling they have a stake in these issues, Burroughs talks about
water issues of two other countries. One is the Netherlands, which
had a disastrous flood in 1953, but now can boast preeminent
expertise in the technology of controlling water and preventing
flooding. The Dutch were more immediately ready to help remove the
waters after the Katrina flood than our own government was, which
brings up the other country with water control problems. That is,
of course, the United States, not just for the problems from
Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed so much of New Orleans. The
United States also faces massive ongoing droughts in its Southwest.
There simply is not enough fresh water to supply the large
population areas of that region.
These are matters of life and death. Nobody can survive for long
without fresh water, and these are issues that could lead to some
very serious wars. It is important to know about what is happening
and track how serious the problem is becoming. I rate WATER WARS a
+2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.
Film Credits: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1509836/combined>
What others are saying:
<http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/water_wars/>
Mark R. Leeper
mle...@optonline.net
Copyright 2010 Mark R. Leeper