On May 24th at 9:20 p.m. on ORF 2
Vienna (OTS) – Simply turn on the tap at any time and we have clear, clean drinking water available. What we take for granted in Austria is anything but normal for many people. Around a billion people currently have no access to clean drinking water. For the current issue of the ORF correspondent magazine “WeltWeit” on the topic “Valuable goods. Who owns the water?” report on Friday, May 24, 2024, at 9:20 p.m. on ORF 2 Isabella Purkart from Kenya, Patrick A. Hafner from Iceland and Vanessa Böttcher from Indonesia.
The United Nations estimates that the number of people without access to clean drinking water will triple by 2050. The consequences of climate change are largely responsible for the increasing water shortage in individual regions and drinking water supplies are also very unevenly distributed around the world. In Africa, Latin America and Asia, there are already life-threatening water shortages in many places during periods of drought, while other countries sell their drinking water in bottles. Water is increasingly becoming a commodity from which a few make huge profits.
Correspondent Isabella Purkart is traveling in Kenya, where severe flooding has already claimed more than 250 lives. This year the rainy season is intensified by the El Niño weather phenomenon. As always, the poorest of the poor are most affected. There are fears of an outbreak of disease in the slums of Nairobi, as there is a lack of clean drinking water more than ever. The situation is particularly critical in Mathare, one of the most densely populated slums in the capital. Even before the floods, water cartels controlled the supply there. The consequences for people are serious: high prices, unreliable deliveries and health risks because the expensive water purchased is often contaminated.
At the very edge of Europe, correspondent Patrick A. Hafner experiences the absolute opposite. There is an abundance of drinking water in Iceland. So much that it is available to all residents free of charge. One person who has turned the island’s water wealth into a business is entrepreneur Jón Ólafsson. He owns the rights to the Ölfus spring, markets the water as glacier water and sells it all over the world. But in Iceland there is resistance to selling off the valuable resource of water just for the profit of a private company.
Correspondent Vanessa Böttcher meets people in Indonesia who live in the paradoxical situation of almost dying of thirst, even though the water has been up to their necks for years. In the capital Jakarta, almost half of the residents have no access to clean water, and at the same time the megacity is in danger of going under. With eleven million people in the city and around 33 million people in the metropolitan region, Jakarta is one of the largest cities in the world. Almost 40 percent of the city area lies below sea level. Every year the city sinks a little further, the salt water contaminates the groundwater and makes it undrinkable. For many, everyday life has become a daily battle for and against water.