diaz pervade: Our deep relationship with water

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Our deep relationship with water

Jonathon Keats, contributor

(Image: Abbas/Magnum Photos)

FIFTEEN centuries before Coca-Cola and Pepsi began competing over the bottled water industry, the undisputed market leader was the Catholic Church. Pilgrims were the customers, drawn to holy wells by reports of cures for everything from bellyaches to madness.

As James Salzman relates in Drinking Water, there was often some truth to the hype as certain waters naturally amassed medicinal minerals including bicarbonate and lithium from the earth. "The precise composition of the water depends on the local geology," Salzman writes, "and, it turns out, so does the water's therapeutic value."

The scope of Salzman's book is impressive, encompassing everything from the construction of Roman aqueducts to subsidised water purification in Zambia. While he is sometimes repetitive, he is comprehensive.

Most enlightening is the deep historical context he provides for present-day debates. For instance, the principle that access to safe drinking water is a human right - as proclaimed by the United Nations - can be traced back to biblical times. According to the Jewish Talmud, waterways "belong to every man". Salzman finds similar ideas embedded in the ancient Indigenous Australian and Bedouin cultures.

The contrasting perception of water as a commodity to be sold is closely tied to the history of bottling, which Salzman meticulously traces from medieval holy wells to the luxury spas popular with Victorian elites through the launch of Perrier as a global brand in the 1970s.

Our ideas about water have arguably grown more muddied over the centuries, culminating in the current sale of municipal tap water by Coca-Cola and Pepsi in branded servings - at up to a 10,000-fold profit. Of course all the packaging and transportation takes energy, so the real price is paid by the environment, which is now increasingly prone to drought.