Global Water Bankruptcy

In March of 2013, a declaration of financial emergency was made, and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appointed Emergency Manager Keven Orr to manage the books in Detroit. Orr’s appointment made him the most powerful person in the city. Elected officials had no say, the voters had no say, and we were all rendered powerless. In July of the same year, Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. Our biggest asset is our water department, so it became the bargaining tool to get us out of debt. By 2014, masses of people, hundreds of thousands of homes, were slated to get their water shut off. 

The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department didn't have the infrastructure to shut off that many homes, so Mayor Duggan’s friends, Homrich Demolition Co., were given the contract to the tune of 12 million dollars to shut off water. Imagine if that money had been used to keep people's water on. Homrich adopted the practice of sending two guys in a truck to shut off whole neighborhoods at a time. Many people were displaced because if you don't have water, you have to move. Others died during this time. It was the hardest of times. Detroit knows what living with water scarcity looks like. 

Detroit is not alone. About 4 billion people on the planet live in places that experience water scarcity for one month out of the year. 75% of the world's population lives in countries that are critically water insecure. Recently, the United Nations declared that the world has entered into a time of “Global Water Bankruptcy.” 

In a report by Kaveh Madani of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, water bankruptcy is defined as a condition in which human water systems have exceeded sustainable limits, draining renewable water sources and depleting vital reserves like aquifers, glaciers, and wetlands faster than they can recover. The result is permanent ecological damage, collapsing water infrastructure, and a rapidly worsening future for the communities that depend on them. This is not simply a “water crisis,” a phrase that suggests a temporary emergency that can eventually be resolved. This is water bankruptcy: a condition of chronic overconsumption and ecological collapse in which our water systems can no longer sustain life as they once did. 

We are in a crisis bigger than anything we could have ever imagined. Nearly 70% of the world’s major aquifers are being drained faster than they can recover, while glaciers, one of the planet’s most critical freshwater reserves, have lost more than 30% of their mass since 1970. More than half of the world’s food is grown in regions where water supplies are unstable or disappearing altogether, placing global food systems in immediate danger. At the same time, groundwater depletion is so extreme that 2 billion people now live on land that is literally sinking beneath them. This is no longer a distant environmental threat; it is a global emergency unfolding in real time. 

There are a lot of contributing factors, and all of them have disaster capitalism written all over them. Land degradation and pollution, over extraction of minerals and surface and groundwater, unsustainable agricultural practices, weapons manufacturing, and the unchecked growth of data centers are all causing apocalyptic climate change and resource bankruptcies. For the very short time that racial and patriarchal capitalism has been most of the earth's economic system, it has completely trashed all living ecosystems. 

We find ourselves in a monumental moment of change, whether we like it or not. Whether we are ready for it or not. This is not the first time humans have been forced into changing the way we live. From hunter-gatherers, to agriculture, to industrial society, to what? What can we dream up that will save the water and allow all of life to thrive? It is up to us. 

Capitalism has always been a system of death. It is well past the time to enact a system of life that protects the most precious gifts Mother Earth gives us and our very own future.  We cannot and will not allow billionaires to use up every last drop of water on the planet. There are more of us than there are of them, and they know their time is up.   

~ Valerie Blakely