Cape Town- Environmental Injustice

Guy Aharon

The topic I chose to write about, is the fact that some people, in our days, still don’t have access to clean water.

Since the 19th century, people have successfully been able to purify water and improve the water we drink, to keep us healthy.

Most of the people in the world have access to clean water. However, a lot of people don’t!

Researches show that over 840,000 people die each year because of poor quality water.

Researches had also shown that in 2015, about 663,000,000 people lacked access to purified and clean water.

Purifying / transporting water isn’t easy though.

Transporting water is hard because water is heavy, and it needs special containers and trucks as well.

Purifying water is very expensive.

Big cities (for example, Tel-Aviv) and developed countries do have the money and ability to purify water, and this is one of the main reasons that poor villages or developing countries can’t purify water.

My solution is, that large developed countries and big environmental organizations need to invest money or build at least 1 water purifying facility for each developing country that requires their help.

I know that it costs a lot of money, but it saves a lot of money to this poor governments and helps them in building and improving their country.

Did you know? Researches show that women in Africa spend around 40 billion hours in total per year, looking for clean water.

Here is an example for this kind of environmental injustice:

Cape Town, the capital of South Africa is in the middle of a huge water crisis.

This city suffers from very hot and dry summers, but also gets a lot of rain in the winter.

Since 1995, the city’s population had grown by 79%, from 2.8 million citizens to 4.3 million in 2015.

This is one of the things that caused the water crisis: the population grew faster than the water storage.

Another thing that caused the water crisis is global warming.

The weather is really hot and the water consumption keeps on growing.

This reason is also why I count this case as an environmental injustice:

This city did nothing, but they’re one of the first communities to get hit by the causes and effects of global warming.

The city also suffers from polluted rivers, because of oil or garbage that is thrown to the rivers.