industryterm:water systems

  • It Takes a Village: Despite Challenges, Migrant Groups Lead Development in Senegal

    For generations, migrants have emigrated from Senegal, particularly from in and around the Senegal River Valley along the country’s borders with Mauritania and Mali. Young people from the Peul (particularly its Toucouleur subgroup) and Soninké ethnic groups first left to pursue economic opportunities around West Africa and Central Africa. Later, migration to France became a popular method for supporting families and improving social status in origin communities, and migrants today contribute a substantial amount in social and financial capital to development in Senegal. Remittances are essential to livelihoods, making up almost 14 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2017—the fifth-highest share in Africa.

    Widespread Senegalese migration to France first began with temporary workers. As their stays became more permanent, they brought their families to live with them, typically in communities on the outskirts of Paris and other major cities. Once settled in their new communities, they established hometown associations (HTAs), largely to support development back in Senegal.

    Increasing barriers to free movement for current and former French colonial subjects that began in the 1970s—and further restrictions on migration more recently—have made life for West African migrants and would-be migrants more difficult. As a result, migrants and their HTAs have been forced to adapt. Meanwhile, in the face of shrinking income flows, some HTAs have begun to professionalize their operations and work more strategically, moving beyond construction projects to ones that seek to foster economic development.

    This article, based on the author’s Fulbright-funded research in Senegal in 2016-17, explores the impact of policy changes in France on Senegalese migrants and the activities of HTAs, and how these shifts influence development and quality of life in migrants’ origin communities in the Senegal River Valley. As the European Union incorporates support for development into migration partnerships with African countries, in hopes of reducing spontaneous migration to Europe, the work of HTAs holds important lessons for actors on both sides.

    From Colonial Ties to Migrant Arrivals

    France, which colonized large swaths of West Africa starting in the late 1800s, first became a destination for economic migrants from modern-day Senegal during and after the colonial period. For example, West Africans fought for France in both world wars and many remained in France afterwards. After World War II, France recruited migrants from its colonial empire to reconstruct the country and work in its factories. These pull factors, coupled with droughts in the Sahel region during the 1970s and 1980s, accelerated the number of young, low-skilled West Africans migrating to France during the mid- and late 20th century. As of mid-2017, about 120,000 Senegalese lived in France, according to United Nations estimates. France is the top destination for Senegalese migrants after The Gambia, and it is also the top origin for formal remittances arriving in Senegal.

    Economically motivated migration became an important source of income in rural eastern Senegal, with France frequently seen as the ideal destination. Even though migrants in Europe often worked in factories, construction, security, or sanitation, their salaries were substantial compared to those of family members back in Senegal, who generally worked as subsistence farmers or animal herders. As result of remittances, families were able to construct larger, more durable homes, afford healthier diets, and increase their consumption of other goods, particularly electronics such as cellphones, refrigerators, fans, and televisions.

    In addition, from the 1960s onward, Senegalese migrants in France began to form HTAs to support their origin communities. HTAs are formal or informal organizations of migrants from the same town, region, or ethnic group living outside their region or country of origin. These organizations sponsor cultural activities in destination communities, foster solidarity among migrants, and/or finance development projects in hometowns. HTA leadership or traditional authorities in the origin community then manage these funds and related projects on the ground. While migrants from many countries form HTAs, West Africans maintain particularly close social, political, and financial ties with their hometowns through these organizations.

    For West African migrants, social pressures compel HTA participation and members are also traditionally required to pay dues toward a communal fund. Once enough money has been amassed, the organization funds a public goods project in the hometown, such as the construction of a school, mosque, cemetery, health center, post office, or water system. These migrant-led development projects have been crucial to communities across the Senegal River Valley, which are often far from urban centers, markets, or infrastructure such as paved roads, and rarely receive contact from the central government or assistance from local government actors. As a result, migrant projects often fill the void by providing most of the public goods enjoyed by these communities.

    Senegalese HTAs thus contribute immensely to human development and quality of life in communities in this region. The impact of this work, as well as of household-level support provided by remittances, continued motivating young people to leave eastern Senegal for France, as well as regional destinations, during the mid-20th century.

    Policy Changes Drive Migration Shifts

    Beginning in the early 1980s, France began to enact a series of restrictive policies limiting low-skilled economic immigration and creating barriers to naturalization and family reunification. These changes have continued in recent decades, raising questions about the future of the migration and development cycle now cemented in the Senegal River Valley.

    Prior to the mid-1970s, Senegalese migrants freely circulated into and out of France as current, and eventually former, colonial subjects, following independence in 1960. France first introduced limits to Senegalese immigration in 1974 with a law requiring residence permits for all migrant workers.

    Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, a series of laws including the Bonnet and Pasqua Laws restricted entry, family reunification, and naturalization for many immigrants. Although some of these provisions were later abolished, they led to several high-profile deportation operations targeting West Africans and laid the groundwork for future restrictive French immigration legislation.

    Several bilateral accords between France and Senegal over the years also focused on limiting economic migration and facilitating return for irregular migrants already in France. The evolution of these policies reflects a shift from promoting low-skilled economic immigration to satisfy labor shortages, to emphasizing high-skilled and temporary immigrants such as students.

    During the author’s fieldwork, interviewees cited many of these policies as having substantial effects on migration and development in their communities. The 1990s, the turn of the 21st century, and the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy were the most common turning points identified when migration and development in eastern Senegal first began to shift (see Table 1). Participants emphasized the introduction of French visas and residence permits for Senegalese immigrants as the first major barriers to migration. Subsequent important political moments for participants included deportation operations in the 1980s and then-Interior Minister Sarkozy’s famous 2005 speech on immigration choisie, the government’s policy of carefully selecting immigrants who would best integrate and contribute to the French economy and society.

    At the same time, external political changes were not the only factors influencing these phenomena in the Senegal River Valley. Many participants also cited social and economic events in France as having negative consequences for Senegalese migrants and their development activities. The global economic crisis beginning in 2008 led to the disappearance of employment opportunities, including across Europe. This downturn thus decreased incomes and the ability of migrants to send money back to families and contribute to HTA projects.

    Participants reported that the mechanization of automobile production and other manufacturing, a source of employment for many West Africans for decades, compounded these effects. In cities such as Paris, with tight and expensive housing markets, these economic conditions created additional challenges to saving money. Individuals in eastern Senegal had traditionally seen France as a promised land offering easy income and employment opportunities to anyone who made the journey, regardless of French skills or education level. However, this view changed for many as challenges became more frequent.

    Beyond economic changes, shifts in attitudes within French society also affected the Senegalese diaspora. Participants noted an increase in Islamophobia and a growing climate of mistrust and intolerance toward migrants in recent years, which have only exacerbated difficulties for West Africans in France.

    Further, political and economic changes in Senegal also affected diaspora-led projects and migration patterns in the region. The administration of President Macky Sall, who took office in 2012, has decentralized development and other administrative responsibilities, delegating them to regional and local authorities. In addition, Sall’s national development scheme, Plan Sénégal Émergent (PSE), aims to provide alternatives to irregular migration from a country with high youth unemployment and a legacy of emigration. Participants cited these domestic shifts as significant, although many agreed it was too early to judge their influence on the quality of life in their communities.

    Migration and Development: Perceptions and Reality

    Study participants said they view these international and domestic political, economic, and social shifts as affecting migration flows and development efforts in their communities. Though views on whether emigration is rising or falling varied, many participants agreed that irregular migration was on the rise. Further, most participants predicted continued interest in migration among young people absent alternative employment options in the Senegal River Valley.

    Whether because of limits on authorized entry into France, difficulties upon arrival, or other motivations, migrants from eastern Senegal have diversified their destinations in recent years. Some migrants have eschewed traditional receiving countries throughout West and Central Africa or France in favor of destinations such as Italy, Spain, the United States, and even several South American countries including Argentina and Brazil.

    Limits on economic migration to France and elsewhere in Europe also impacted migrant-led development in Senegalese municipalities. Interviewees held diverse opinions on whether HTA activities were as frequent or as effective as they had been several years or even decades ago. Some said they observed consistent support for community-wide projects and noted innovative strategies used to combat potential lack of purchasing power or access to funding. However, many study participants who indicated a decrease in HTA support for their villages said they believed that migrants contributed less frequently to community-level projects, instead prioritizing maintaining household remittance levels.

    When asked about specific migrant-funded development activities, many cited completed and ongoing public goods initiatives led by their village’s HTA. When HTAs in this region began their work in the mid-20th century, mosques and water systems were frequent initial projects, with water access evolving from simple manual wells to electric- or solar-powered deep-drill wells connected to taps throughout the municipality. Today, many basic needs have been fulfilled thanks to years of HTA support, and some migrants have more recently turned to renovating and expanding these structures.

    Some HTAs have stagnated in recent years, while others have moved beyond a public goods focus to new innovative strategies of promoting development in their hometowns. Many interviewees cited a need for income- and job-generating projects to promote local economic growth and incentivize young people to remain in their home communities.

    Several HTAs in the author’s study sites piloted this type of project, including the construction of a bakery in one community and a carpentry training center in another. The bakery, built in early 2017 thanks to funds from migrants in France and their French donors, promised to provide the town with affordable, high-quality bread and employment for several people. Meanwhile, the carpentry center offered young men the opportunity to train with experienced carpenters on machines provided by a French donor. This model not only provided professional skills to young people, but also produced locally built furniture for the surrounding community to purchase.

    Within migrant households, participants noted that remittances continued to support consumption and home construction. Beyond the purchase of food, electronics, and health care, remittances also defrayed children’s educational costs, including school supplies and fees. Household members, particularly migrants’ wives, perceived both positive and negative impacts of migration on household-level development. On the one hand, remittances finance the purchase of tools and animals, the construction of irrigation infrastructure, or the hiring of employees to expand the scale of the household’s work and thus its earnings. However, the loss of the migrant’s labor to tend to animals or fields also hurts households without enough adolescents, adult children, or other family members to maintain these activities.

    Nonmigrant households had their own ideas about changes in migrant-led development. Though they did not receive remittances, individuals in these households largely perceived that community-wide development activities benefited them, as public structures built with HTAs’ support were accessible to everyone. However, despite receiving occasional financial gifts from migrant neighbors or friends, some nonmigrant households expressed feeling dissatisfied with or excluded from development happening around them.

    Effective HTA Adaptations and Development Strategies

    Certain HTAs and individual migrants have been able to overcome challenges due to decreased income or barriers to authorized employment in France and other host countries. Individuals in origin communities perceived strategies modifying HTA structures, funding sources, and project types as most effective in continuing development efforts.

    One particularly effective change was the professionalization of these organizations. HTAs that moved from traditional leadership hierarchies and divisions of labor to more formal, structured ones were better able to form financial and logistical partnerships and expand the scope of their projects. Associations with clearly defined goals, leadership, project plans, and project evaluation were able to attract the cooperation of French government entities such as the Program to Support Solidarity Initiatives for Development (PAISD for its French acronym) or other international donors. Thus, despite a potential decrease in income from individuals, many HTAs began supplementing member dues with larger funding sources. Formalized structures also promoted better project management, evaluation, and long-term sustainability.

    Another key HTA adaptation was the idea of becoming community or village associations, as opposed to migrant associations. The frequent use of the term association de migrants can have a top-down connotation, implying that the diaspora unilaterally provides ideas, support, and manpower for development efforts without important input about living conditions from communities in Senegal. For HTAs that started conceptualizing themselves as a unified development organization with a branch abroad and a branch in Senegal, this strategy seemed to improve communication and promote inclusion, thus responding better to current needs and giving the local community more of a stake in projects.

    A gradual trend toward more investment- and training-focused projects has also seen success. The basic human development needs of many communities have been satisfied after decades of hard work; still, conditions are not sufficient to keep the next generation from leaving. While the bakery and the carpentry center are key examples of productive initiatives, more support and focus on this type of project could bring meaningful change to local economies and markets. Many local organizations and collectives are already doing quality work in agriculture, herding, or transportation, and increased funding from HTAs could greatly expand the scale of their existing activities.

    Meanwhile, women’s associations in rural Senegal do not always receive HTA support, representing a potential area for expansion. West African HTAs are traditionally dominated by men, with male leadership at origin and abroad. In Senegal, economic activity is frequently divided by gender and women run many of their own associations, often focused on agriculture or microsavings. However, these structures do not receive much or any support from female migrants in France, who are less likely to be in the labor force than male Senegalese and thus might not be able to send money back to Senegal. Given these conditions, many well-organized and highly motivated women’s agricultural collectives would greatly benefit from increased migrant support.

    Finally, the federalization of community-level HTAs into larger regional organizations is an increasingly common strategy. This approach allows migrants to pool their resources and knowledge to tackle larger-scale development questions, despite economic or administrative challenges they may individually face in their host communities.

    The Future of Migrant-Led Development in Eastern Senegal

    Understanding the complex relationship among emigration, HTA development activities, and political, economic, and social changes in both France and at home is essential to the future of development in eastern Senegal. This study suggests that while HTA activities may be affected by political shifts domestically and abroad, economic changes on the sending and receiving sides are equally important and may be felt more immediately by the population at origin.

    Senegalese HTAs can no longer depend on traditional fundraising and project management strategies. These organizations must adapt to current and emerging economic and political conditions hindering legal employment and income accumulation among migrants in France and across Europe. Inclusive project planning that considers the needs and perspectives of the local population, as well as openness to productive investments and collaboration with outside partners are key steps to sustaining the work of HTAs.

    Current European efforts such as the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF) are incorporating development support into partnerships with countries including Senegal to try to stem migration. While the efficacy of migrant-driven projects and even state-led development activities in preventing emigration remains to be seen—particularly given the social pressures and cycle of dependence at play in this region—harnessing the power, expertise, and motivation of the diaspora is essential for the interests of actors on both continents. EU projects and dialogues that do not include African diasporas and their HTAs may not adequately address the phenomena occurring in regions such as rural Senegal. Building on migrant-led development work is a crucial step in changing conditions that contribute to emigration from this region.

    https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/it-takes-village-despite-challenges-migrant-groups-lead-development
    #Sénégal #développement #migrations #remittances #France #politique_migratoire #associations_locales

  • Community-Scale Water Sovereignty: Part II

    As part of a series examining best practices in water resilience at the home and community level, this post looks into what happens when water is no longer local — highlighting the challenges faced in Indonesia, and throughout the world, when water is privatized.

    The UN has declared the 10-year period beginning in 2018 as “The International Decade for Action on Water for Sustainable Development.” [1] Construction, production of goods, and local livelihoods all ultimately depend on the quantity of available water; it is a major determinant of settlement patterns, and sets limits to growth. When communities manage their water supplies locally, collective awareness of water quality and availability leads to careful, deliberate, and sustainable use— with enough water available for all. [2]

    In the global growth economy, by contrast, it is assumed that development can go on endlessly, regardless of a community’s locally-available resources, including water. It is also assumed that centralization and privatization lead to greater ‘efficiency’ than when resources are controlled at the community level. But centralized water systems that empower multinational corporations can quickly tip the balance towards crisis, as revealed in the following examples from Indonesia, including the small island of Gili Meno. The question then is: What lessons can we learn from the experience of places like these, when it comes to managing water equitably and sustainably?

    One of a trio of small islands off the northwest coast of Lombok in Indonesia, Gili Meno has about 500 residents, and no fresh water source. For this reason, it was nearly uninhabited until the 1970s, when the government awarded land to privately held coconut plantations and supplied prison inmates as labor. Other residents from Lombok soon followed and settled on the island. [3] For a few decades, rooftop rainwater collection was the only source of drinking water on the island.

    Pak Udin moved to Gili Meno in the late 1980s, and now runs a shop and homestay on the island. He recalls that in his early days there, residents would fill up large containers from their household water tanks after each rainstorm. Stored in cool, dark rooms, the containers would keep water fresh and clean for up to a year, until the following rainy season. In his recollection, people rarely, if ever, got sick from the water.

    But in the following decades, tourism on the Gili islands experienced rapid growth, sparking a spate of new construction. The new buildings usually did not incorporate rainwater harvesting systems, and most homes quickly came to rely on government-built wells — which provided water that was often too salty to drink — and on 21-liter Aqua-brand bottled water. [4]

    Aqua, manufactured by the French company Danone, accounts for 60% of all bottled water sales in Indonesia. [5] At around US$1.50 per jug, it is affordable for the middle class and has caught on throughout the country — but a family with two minimum-wage earners purchasing three Aqua containers per week can find themselves spending nearly 10% of their income on drinking water.

    Absent an alternative, almost all visitors to Gili Meno buy even smaller bottles of water, at an even greater economic and ecological cost. Gili Meno has no recycling program — and no effective waste management program of any kind. [6] The piles of bottles in makeshift landfills on the island continue to grow, as do Danone’s profits. Efforts at building desalination plants or bringing water over in pipes from mainland Lombok, a few miles away, have encountered many setbacks. It is especially risky to depend on such infrastructure given the recent earthquakes that have shaken the region, which left neighboring islands Gili Trawangan and Gili Air without water for days. [7]

    The only residents for whom water is still free, says Pak Udin, are those few households that still maintain and use their rainwater collection systems.

    On mainland Lombok, some communities have no municipal water supply or traditional system, and rely entirely on the private sector for water. In Sekaroh in southwest Lombok, all water arrives on trucks, with residents paying as much as US$34 for 5,000 liters of non-potable water — on top of purchasing drinking water. Those who lack sufficient storage space and must therefore buy partial truckloads of water end up paying even more per liter: as in so many market-based systems, water in Lombok is more expensive for the poor. [8]

    In neighboring Bali, the government supplies water to much of the island via pipes from natural water sources in the central mountains. But in the dry season — the months of July and August — municipal water supplies sometimes shut off without warning for weeks at a time. In 2013, water ran out for two months in the arid region of the Bukit; supply-demand economics took over and truckloads of water soon cost more than US$100 each. Water-insecure Bukit residents are in good company: 2.7 billion people — more than 1/3 of the world’s population — lack reliable access to clean water for at least one month of the year. [9]

    When water is scarce in Bali, less affluent people and businesses are forced to go without. Commercial establishments including hotels, which consume many times more water per capita than Balinese households, are billed at a lower rate, and are given prolonged access to water during times of drought. [10] What’s more, groundwater is severely depleted in much of Bali due to heavy use from the tourism industry, dropping up to 50 meters (164 feet) in the past ten years. [11] Deep wells are often infeasible for local families due to high cost, site conditions, or concerns about further depleting water from neighbors’ shallow wells.

    As on Gili Meno, Aqua-brand bottles are the most common source of drinking water in Bali. Locals, noting that bottles sit in uncovered trucks for hours in the blazing equatorial sun on long journeys throughout the island, have expressed concerns that plastic may leach into the water. They have also noted that the Indonesian rupiah is a volatile currency, and that dependency on global private water suppliers and fossil fuels subjects their drinking water — their most vital resource — to the speculative whims of the global economy.

    So what makes household and drinking water sources truly sustainable? From these examples, it seems clear that sustainable systems are:

    Safe from natural disasters. When centralized systems with no backup storage are damaged, everyone is left without water. Because earthquakes, floods, and other natural disasters often affect homes in a community unevenly, having a large number of smaller systems in place increases the likelihood that at least some will still function after natural disasters, and can provide water to those who need it most in those critical times.

    Insulated from the global economy. Water prices that depend on currency fluctuations and the bottom lines of multi-national companies can devastate families living at the margins. In sustainable systems, safe water from local sources is available to every household, regardless of ability to pay.

    Equally accessible to everyone. Much of the UN rhetoric surrounding the “water for sustainable development” decade is focused on conflict resolution and on preventing the violence that inevitably results from unequal access to water. Large-scale market-based systems and handouts for water-heavy industries reward those with a higher ability to pay, creating and exacerbating class tensions. While some community-managed water systems can lead to biases against minority populations [12], conflict at the community level is often easier to address than structural inequalities built into centralized systems.

    Localized. Ultimately, the above characteristics are most likely to be found when water systems are localized, using technologies that can be managed and maintained locally, and with policies that are decided upon by communities themselves. Localization also encourages systems that are well-matched to the ability of the local environment to provide for its human inhabitants, with support from governments or non-governmental bodies as needed.

    In large-scale centralized systems, several factors lead to a loss of local control. Resource-intensive technologies are needed to access water from deep within the earth and transport it long distances, and non-local industry can become a region’s biggest water consumer. As a result, communities lose control over their most precious resource. Large-scale systems also make it difficult or impossible to know whether local ecosystems can support their human populations. In rapidly growing urban areas — especially in semi-arid regions — development is already so divorced from local water resources [13] that drastic strategies are needed — including a sharp reduction in water use for the highest consumers, and a shift back to a way of life that can support human populations. But for rural areas, the path to sustainable water management is relatively simple: reclaim control of water from the global economy, and protect it from unwelcome heavy industry and multinational corporations.

    Many organizations throughout the world are working on decentralized technology and product-service systems to empower local water management. Part 3 of this series will profile a few of these outstanding organizations in Indonesia and beyond.


    https://medium.com/planet-local/community-scale-water-sovereignty-part-ii-9d7378a9daff
    #privatisation #eau #souveraineté #Indonésie #eau_potable

  • The answer is in nature | UNDP
    http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/stories/the-answer-is-in-nature

    Decades of poor management, pollution and overconsumption have thrown our water systems out of balance. And climate change is exacerbating the problem. At the current rate of water use, by 2050, more than half of the world’s population will be at risk of water shortages, according to Make Every Drop Count , a 2018 report from the United Nations and the World Bank on the global water crisis.

    Forests are our strongest allies in securing the freshwater resources life depends on. It is common knowledge that tree roots suck water from the soil to survive. But what is less known is the “rainmaker” role that trees play.

    Forty percent of our planet’s annual rainfall come from evapotranspiration, which happens when trees “exhale” moisture through their leaves. The mist this creates can be seen by satellites all the way in outer space.

    #eau #forêt #déforestation #climat #image_satellite

  • Shocking scale of US drinking water crisis - BBC News
    http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-42141519/why-america-s-drinking-water-crisis-goes-beyond-flint

    While Flint made headlines two years ago when 12 people died due to high lead levels in the city’s water, more than 1,000 water systems across the US have drinking water that fails safety standards for lead.

    For the BBC’s America First? series the BBC’s Aleem Maqbool is exploring health and social issues where the US, the richest country in the world, does not perform well in international rankings.

    #eau #etats-unis

  • Plastic fibres found in tap water around the world, study reveals | Environment | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/06/plastic-fibres-found-tap-water-around-world-study-reveals?CMP=share_btn

    Microplastic contamination has been found in tap water in countries around the world, leading to calls from scientists for urgent research on the implications for health.

    Scores of tap water samples from more than a dozen nations were analysed by scientists for an investigation by Orb Media, who shared the findings with the Guardian. Overall, 83% of the samples were contaminated with plastic fibres.

    The US had the highest contamination rate, at 94%, with plastic fibres found in tap water sampled at sites including Congress buildings, the US Environmental Protection Agency’s headquarters, and Trump Tower in New York. Lebanon and India had the next highest rates.

    European nations including the UK, Germany and France had the lowest contamination rate, but this was still 72%. The average number of fibres found in each 500ml sample ranged from 4.8 in the US to 1.9 in Europe.

    The new analyses indicate the ubiquitous extent of microplastic contamination in the global environment. Previous work has been largely focused on plastic pollution in the oceans, which suggests people are eating microplastics via contaminated seafood.

    #plastique #eau #pollution #It_has_begun

    • Une étude alerte sur les fibres #plastiques contenues dans l’#eau du #robinet
      http://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/environnement/partout-dans-le-monde-l-eau-du-robinet-est-contaminee-par-des-fibres-de

      Le plastique est partout, même dans l’eau du robinet. Une étude réalisée par des scientifiques à l’initiative du site Orb media (en anglais), assure que partout dans le monde, l’eau potable est contaminée par des #microplastiques, et ce dans des quantités qui varient d’un pays à l’autre.

      Selon The Guardian, qui se fait l’écho de ce travail, mercredi 6 septembre, « les scientifiques appellent à ce que la recherche se penche sur les implications de cette présence de plastique pour la #santé ». Jusqu’alors, les scientifiques étudiaient particulièrement les quantités de plastique se trouvant dans l’#océan et susceptibles d’être ingérées par l’homme à travers le #poisson et les fruits de #mer

      Or, les résultats sont inquiétants : sur tous les échantillons d’eau du robinet, prélevés dans 12 pays, 83% d’entre eux contenaient des fibres de plastique. 

      Les #Etats-Unis sont les plus contaminés

      L’Europe s’en sort plutôt mieux que le reste du monde. « Les pays européens, dont le Royaume-Uni, l’Allemagne et la France ont le taux le plus bas, lequel s’élève tout de même à 72% », explique The Guardian. « Le nombre moyen de fibres de plastique trouvées dans chaque échantillon de 500 ml d’eau du robinet s’élèvent à 4,8 aux Etats-Unis, contre 1,9 en Europe », poursuit le quotidien.

      Aux Etats-Unis, les auteurs de l’étude ont en effet retrouvé des fibres de plastique dans 94% des échantillons analysés. « Des échantillons prélevés dans des endroits tels que le Congrès, les bureaux de l’agence de protection de l’environnement et la Trump Tower, à New Yorker », poursuit The Guardian. En Indonésie, ce niveau s’élève à 76,2%, 79,2% en Equateur, 80,8% an Ouganda, 82,4% en Inde et 93,8% au #Liban, selon Orb media.

      Plastic fibres found in tap water around the world, study reveals | Environment | The Guardian
      https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/06/plastic-fibres-found-tap-water-around-world-study-reveals

      https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/06/plastic-fibres-found-tap-water-around-world-study-reveals

      How microplastics end up in drinking water is for now a mystery, but the atmosphere is one obvious source, with fibres shed by the everyday wear and tear of clothes and carpets. Tumble dryers are another potential source, with almost 80% of US households having dryers that usually vent to the open air.

      “We really think that the lakes [and other water bodies] can be contaminated by cumulative atmospheric inputs,” said Johnny Gasperi, at the University Paris-Est Créteil, who did the Paris studies. “What we observed in Paris tends to demonstrate that a huge amount of fibres are present in atmospheric fallout.”

      Plastic fibres may also be flushed into water systems, with a recent study finding that each cycle of a washing machine could release 700,000 fibres into the environment. Rains could also sweep up microplastic pollution, which could explain why the household wells used in Indonesia were found to be contaminated.

      In Beirut, Lebanon, the water supply comes from natural springs but 94% of the samples were contaminated. “This research only scratches the surface, but it seems to be a very itchy one,” said Hussam Hawwa, at the environmental consultancy Difaf, which collected samples for Orb.

      Current standard water treatment systems do not filter out all of the microplastics, Mahon said: “There is nowhere really where you can say these are being trapped 100%. In terms of fibres, the diameter is 10 microns across and it would be very unusual to find that level of filtration in our drinking water systems.”

      Bottled water may not provide a microplastic-free alternative to tapwater, as the they were also found in a few samples of commercial bottled water tested in the US for Orb.

  • Bernie Sanders’ Democratic National Convention speech / Boing Boing
    http://boingboing.net/2016/07/25/bernie-sanders-democratic-na.html


    La journée commence avec un type qui a du culot.

    Thank you. Good evening.

    It is an honor to be with you tonight and to be following in the footsteps of Elizabeth Warren, and to be here tonight to thank Michelle Obama for her incredible service to our country. She has made all of us proud.

    Let me begin by thanking the hundreds of thousands of Americans who actively participated in our campaign as volunteers. Thank you.

    Let me thank the 2 1/2 million Americans who helped fund our campaign with an unprecedented 8 million individual campaign contributions . Anyone know what that average contribution was? That’s right, $27. And let me thank the 13 million Americans who voted for the political revolution, giving us the 1,846 pledged delegates here tonight – 46 percent of the total.

    And delegates: Thank you for being here, and for all the work you’ve done. I look forward to your votes during the roll call on Tuesday night.

    And let me offer a special thanks to the people of my own state of Vermont who have sustained me and supported me as a mayor, congressman, senator and presidential candidate.

    And to my family – my wife Jane, four kids and seven grandchildren –thank you very much for your love and hard work on this campaign.

    I understand that many people here in this convention hall and around the country are disappointed about the final results of the nominating process. I think it’s fair to say that no one is more disappointed than I am. But to all of our supporters – here and around the country – I hope you take enormous pride in the historical accomplishments we have achieved.

    Together, my friends, we have begun a political revolution to transform America and that revolution – our revolution – continues. Election days come and go. But the struggle of the people to create a government which represents all of us and not just the 1 percent – a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice – that struggle continues. And I look forward to being part of that struggle with you.

    Let me be as clear as I can be. This election is not about, and has never been about, Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump, or Bernie Sanders or any of the other candidates who sought the presidency. This election is not about political gossip. It’s not about polls. It’s not about campaign strategy. It’s not about fundraising. It’s not about all the things that the media spends so much time discussing.

    This election is about – and must be about – the needs of the American people and the kind of future we create for our children and grandchildren.

    This election is about ending the 40-year decline of our middle class the reality that 47 million men, women and children live in poverty. It is about understanding that if we do not transform our economy, our younger generation will likely have a lower standard of living then their parents.

    This election is about ending the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality that we currently experience, the worst it has been since 1928. It is not moral, not acceptable and not sustainable that the top one-tenth of one percent now own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, or that the top 1 percent in recent years has earned 85 percent of all new income. That is unacceptable. That must change.

    This election is about remembering where we were 7 1/2 years ago when President Obama came into office after eight years of Republican trickle-down economics.

    The Republicans want us to forget that as a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, our economy was in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Some 800,000 people a month were losing their jobs. We were running up a record-breaking deficit of $1.4 trillion and the world’s financial system was on the verge of collapse.

    We have come a long way in the last 7 1/2 years, and I thank President Obama and Vice President Biden for their leadership in pulling us out of that terrible recession.

    Yes, we have made progress, but I think we can all agree that much, much more needs to be done.

    This election is about which candidate understands the real problems facing this country and has offered real solutions – not just bombast, not just fear-mongering, not just name-calling and divisiveness.

    We need leadership in this country which will improve the lives of working families, the children, the elderly, the sick and the poor. We need leadership which brings our people together and makes us stronger – not leadership which insults Latinos, Muslims, women, African-Americans and veterans – and divides us up.

    By these measures, any objective observer will conclude that – based on her ideas and her leadership – Hillary Clinton must become the next president of the United States. The choice is not even close.

    This election is about a single mom I saw in Nevada who, with tears in her eyes, told me that she was scared to death about the future because she and her young daughter were not making it on the $10.45 an hour she was earning. This election is about that woman and the millions of other workers in this country who are struggling to survive on totally inadequate wages.

    Hillary Clinton understands that if someone in this country works 40 hours a week, that person should not be living in poverty. She understands that we must raise the minimum wage to a living wage. And she is determined to create millions of new jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure – our roads, bridges, water systems and wastewater plants.

    But her opponent – Donald Trump – well, he has a very different point of view. He does not support raising the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour – a starvation wage. While Donald Trump believes in huge tax breaks for billionaires, he believes that states should actually have the right to lower the minimum wage below $7.25.

    Brothers and sisters, this election is about overturning Citizens United, one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in the history of our country. That decision allows the wealthiest people in America, like the billionaire Koch brothers, to spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying elections and, in the process, undermine American democracy.

    Hillary Clinton will nominate justices to the Supreme Court who are prepared to overturn Citizens United and end the movement toward oligarchy in this country. Her Supreme Court appointments will also defend a woman’s right to choose, workers’ rights, the rights of the LGBT community, the needs of minorities and immigrants and the government’s ability to protect our environment.

    If you don’t believe that this election is important, if you think you can sit it out, take a moment to think about the Supreme Court justices that Donald Trump would nominate and what that would mean to civil liberties, equal rights and the future of our country.

    This election is about the thousands of young people I have met all over this country who have left college deeply in debt, and tragically the many others who cannot afford to go to college. During the primary campaign, Secretary Clinton and I both focused on this issue but with somewhat different approaches. Recently, however, we have come together on a proposal that will revolutionize higher education in America. It will guarantee that the children of any family this country with an annual income of $125,000 a year or less – 83 percent of our population – will be able to go to a public college or university tuition free. That proposal also substantially reduces student debt.

    This election is about climate change, the greatest environmental crisis facing our planet, and the need to leave this world in a way that is healthy and habitable for our kids and future generations. Hillary Clinton is listening to the scientists who tell us that – unless we act boldly and transform our energy system in the very near future – there will be more drought, more floods, more acidification of the oceans, more rising sea levels. She understands that when we do that we can create hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs.

    Donald Trump? Well, like most Republicans, he chooses to reject science. He believes that climate change is a “hoax,” no need to address it. Hillary Clinton understands that a president’s job is to worry about future generations, not the short-term profits of the fossil fuel industry.

    This campaign is about moving the United States toward universal health care and reducing the number of people who are uninsured or under-insured. Hillary Clinton wants to see that all Americans have the right to choose a public option in their health care exchange. She believes that anyone 55 years or older should be able to opt in to Medicare and she wants to see millions more Americans gain access to primary health care, dental care, mental health counseling and low-cost prescription drugs through a major expansion of community health centers.

    And What is Donald Trump’s position on health care? Well, no surprise there. Same old, same old Republican contempt for working families. He wants to abolish the Affordable Care Act, throw 20 million people off of the health insurance they currently have and cut Medicaid for lower-income Americans.

    Hillary Clinton also understands that millions of seniors, disabled vets and others are struggling with the outrageously high cost of prescription drugs and the fact that Americans pay the highest prices in the world for the medicine we use. She knows that Medicare must negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry and that drug companies should not be making billions in profits while one in five Americans are unable to afford the medicine they need. The greed of the drug companies must end.

    This election is about the leadership we need to pass comprehensive immigration reform and repair a broken criminal justice system. It’s about making sure that young people in this country are in good schools and at good jobs, not rotting in jail cells. Hillary Clinton understands that we have to invest in education and jobs for our young people, not more jails or incarceration.

    In these stressful times for our country, this election must be about bringing our people together, not dividing us up. While Donald Trump is busy insulting one group after another, Hillary Clinton understands that our diversity is one of our greatest strengths. Yes. We become stronger when black and white, Latino, Asian-American, Native American – when all of us – stand together. Yes. We become stronger when men and women, young and old, gay and straight, native born and immigrant fight together to create the kind of country we all know we can become.

    It is no secret that Hillary Clinton and I disagree on a number of issues. That’s what this campaign has been about. That’s what democracy is about. But I am happy to tell you that at the Democratic Platform Committee there was a significant coming together between the two campaigns and we produced, by far, the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party. Among many, many other strong provisions, the Democratic Party now calls for breaking up the major financial institutions on Wall Street and the passage of a 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act. It also calls for strong opposition to job-killing free trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
    We have got to make sure that the #TPP doesn’t get passed by Cogress during a lame-duck session.

    Our job now is to see that platform implemented by a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House and a Hillary Clinton presidency – and I am going to do everything I can to make that happen.

    I have known Hillary Clinton for 25 years. I remember her as a great first lady who broke precedent in terms of the role that a first lady was supposed to play as she helped lead the fight for universal health care. I served with her in the United States Senate and know her as a fierce advocate for the rights of children, for the women, and for the disabled.

    Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president and I am proud to stand with her tonight.

    Thank you all very much.

    #USA #politique

  • What’s in Your Water? Flint and Beyond | NRDC
    https://www.nrdc.org/resources/whats-your-water-flint-and-beyond

    The devastating lead contamination of the tap water in Flint, Michigan, highlights potentially disastrous gaps in the provision of safe drinking water to all Americans—especially the most vulnerable. The complex, far-reaching shortcomings include poor and unaccountable decisions by public officials as well as deficiencies in the Safe Drinking Water Act and the rules issued under that law that are supposed to address lead contamination. The water crisis in Flint has serious racial and socioeconomic implications, illustrating the broader problem of environmental injustice.

    Yet #Flint is not alone. In an extensive analysis of official EPA violation and enforcement records, NRDC mapped lead-related issues in drinking water systems across the United States. Our research illustrates the extraordinary geographic scope of America’s lead crisis. In 2015, 18 million people were served by water systems with lead violations. These violations were recorded because the systems were not doing everything that they are required to do to protect the public from lead issues, which could include failure to treat to reduce lead levels in the water (health violations), failure to monitor the water for lead as required (monitoring violations), or failure to report lead results to the public or the government (reporting violations).

    #eau #eau_potable #pollution #États-Unis #cartographie

  • The crimes behind the US lead water crisis - World Socialist Web Site
    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/03/19/pers-m19.html
    #eau

    Dr. Edwards had likely read an advance copy of a report in this week’s edition of USA Today, which quoted him extensively, reporting that lead had been found in the drinking water of hundreds of schools and child care centers throughout the country. The report suggested, based on an independent analysis of government data, that as many as one-fifth of water systems in the US have dangerous levels of lead contamination.