How 1 Company Is Helping Solve Clean Water Crisis
Author: Dr. Joseph Mercola | Published: October 8, 2016
“Carbon for Water,” a film by Evan Abramson and Carmen Elsa Lopez, reveals a reality most people in the Western world cannot fathom — a world where a large portion of each day is devoted to finding drinkable water.
In the Western Province of Kenya, 90 percent of the population have no easy access to drinking water. In order to make the available water safe to drink, they must first search for firewood, and then boil the water.
Alas, firewood is an equally scarce commodity, and locals resort to illegally cutting down and stealing wood from the ever-dwindling forest — a practice said to contribute to deforestation, which makes the threat of water shortage even more severe.
At present, Kenya’s forest covers less than 2 percent of the land, but as noted by the filmmakers:1
“Just six or seven decades ago a beautiful forest covered most of Western Province. Today, a lot of the forest is gone. Forest degradation and the reduction of rainfall are connected.
Once the forest is destroyed, the rainfall is reduced. In order to avoid conflicts that might lead to civil wars, Kenya’s forests need to be protected urgently, but that can’t happen if people rely on firewood to boil the water they need to drink.”