Original subtitles

French Agency for Developpement (AFD) is the proud partner of this film.

All my life, I have been fascinated by water

I saw men floating in the clouds,

I saw waterfalls shaping the forest,

and sculpting landscapes.

I saw life blossoming in the water,

I saw men living in the rivers

I was a passionate observer of water.

And then I discovered that I was connected to it

in a completely unexpected way.

In Paris, I, who thought I used some tens

of litres of water per day,

learned that in fact I consumed almost 5,000 litres,

and that this water came from all over the world!

But where is this water hidden?

This is the water needed to produce everything that I consume.

Just think, it takes 3 litres of water to produce 1.5 litre of mineral water!

40 litres to grow a salad!

140 litres for a cup of coffee!

185 litres for a kilo of tomatoes!

330 litres for a loaf of bread!

960 litres for a litre of wine!

1,000 litres for a kilo of apples!

1,100 litres for a litre of milk!

1,900 litres for a kilo of pasta!

3,400 litres for a kilo of rice!

11,000 litres for a pair of jeans!

15,000 litres for a kilo of beef!

This water has been used to produce cereals

that have fed the beef that I eat...

a European family of four consumes 140,000 litres of water every week!

This is what we call "virtual water"

these figures are almost unbelievable.

Our lifestyles, our travels, our hobbies,

all continuously combine to increase our water requirements.

They are growing so fast

that they sometimes exceed what nature can provide.

But water is also desperately lacking

for more than one billion people.

I have never drunk clean drinking water

90% of polluted water goes back

into nature without being treated.

It was forbidden to sell our fish.

They said it was poisoned

Contaminated water still kills more

than 4,000 children every day.

I am always afraid for the lives of my children...

Enough water to feed humanity is still lacking.

I did not even have enough to feed myself,

I had to buy rice to supplement my diet.

Water is the source of conflicts in many countries.

I have killed many men,

I had to kill them for my safety.

In South Sudan,

This incredible machine, as high as a 5-storey building,

should have dug a canal,

started a war that lasted for 30 years.

To find solutions to these vital issues,

men and women did not wait for the policy makers.

They have solutions and they work.

Vandana Shiva, an impassioned Indian,

is fighting for a new agriculture:

We must move towards more calorific

crops that use less water.

G�rard Roso has drilled over 4,000 wells throughout Africa:

I feel that when I leave a village,

after having brought them water,

it is important.

Catarina de Albuquerque who argued the case

to the United Nations for the right

to clean water and sanitation for all.

We have to talk about "shit",

we must face things head on, there are solutions.

But also ordinary citizens whose lives are at stake,

like Annete,

the toilet lady in a slum in Kenya,

who has made hygiene her personal crusade.

I am proud to work in the public toilets.

Or Ek Sonn Chann,

an incorruptible Cambodian,

who works miracles in Phnom Penh:

I have a dream: to supply potable water to all Cambodians

- A THIRSTY WORLD -

A film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Directed by Thierry Piantanida and Baptiste Rouget-Luchaire

Original music by Armand Amar

In space, water is rarer than gold.

And the little water found there is always frozen...

Always? No!

Our blue planet has gaseous, solid and liquid water!

It is this miracle that has allowed life on Earth.

If the Earth was only 5% closer to the sun,

it would be a scorching, waterless desert, like Venus.

If the earth was only 3% futher away from the sun,

it would be a frozen desert, like Mars.

Water has made Earth a living planet.

Our Earth has 1,4 billion km3 of water.

Remove from that the salt water, which we cannot use.

Remove the water at the north and south poles

and water that is deep underground,

which is inaccessible to mankind.

What is left?

0,02% of all water on earth.

No more than the amount held by Lake Baikal, in Russia! The world's largest lake.

That is the amount of water that nature gives us every year.

No more than that!

Are these mountain-climbers on the summit of Mont Blanc

aware of being on the first link in the great chain of water?

The high mountain is one of our large water reservoirs.

Snow is transformed into ice and accumulates there, year after year.

It will supply billions of people and countless living species.

The sun is slowly melting

the frozen water stored on the summits.

Once released,

the water starts its great journey towards the ocean.

It makes its way down,

growing from a cascade into a torrent.

It feeds the forests whose roots absorb its vital energy.

Water is an irrestible force.

It shatters rock, and takes everything with it.

When it picks up speed, its destructive power increases.

Then it finally deposits its sediment load,

and creates plains and deltas,

the most fertile land on the planet.

Water is an artist that reveals itself to me from the sky.

In Kenya, Lake Magadi was once inhabited by hippopotamus,

crocodiles and fish.

Little by little it has dried up.

Today, it reminds me of an unknown planet.

Minerals from hot springs have accumulated on the lake-bed,

forming an incredible palette of colours.

One of the few species that survives here is apink flamingo.

It feeds on the micro-organisms that thrive in these warm waters.

The marshes are incredibly rich,

because they provide a multitude of habitats and abundant food.

They swell like a sponge during the floods

and restore the water during periods of drought.

This strange mosaic that I filmed in Congo

is what remains of ancient agricultural practices,

the memory of which has been retained by the marsh.

For four and a half billion years, the same water

has circulated endlessly through all living species.

I drink the water that has refreshed dinosaurs!

We owe the boldest relief landscapes on Earth to water.

It took millions of years to carve the Grand Canyon in the United States.

When it seeps into the earth, water supplies the underground water tables.

These valuable reserves were formed over thousands

and sometimes millions of years.

They do not regenerate very much.

Along with glaciers, underground water is our main water reserve.

But water is not evenly distributed across the globe.

Some regions receive a hundred times more rain than others.

Water is sometimes so scarce that men are willing to kill for it!

In northern Kenya, a country I know so well,

it has not rained for over a year.

Two tribes of nomadic shepherds,

the Dassanech and the Turkana,

compete with each other to capture the last oasis of greenery.

I have killed many men,

I had to kill them for my safety.

We live side by side with our enemies

and are permanently at war with each other.

There is no respite or moment of rest.

Even sat here we are probably being watched.

These men

risk their lives every day to find water.

This war dance is celebrating the safe return

of the shepherds and their flocks to the village.

A week after our filmshoot,

thirteen people among those we filmed were killed...

Dying for water...

I am often worried when my children

take our animals out to graze and drink.

We are never sure if they will come back or not.

It is only in the evening when I see them

that I am sure they are still alive.

I am afraid of our enemies.

Like them, we are waiting for rain,

but it has not rained for more than a year.

We came back here because it is the only place

where any pasture remains for our animals.

Hundreds of families, terrorized by the water war,

gave up everything to take refuge in this makeshift camp.

When I was young, there was plenty of food,

and then there was famine.

I went to Todenyang to find food.

But our life has become hell,

people began to die.

Now, I am in Lorenyang,

because the Dassanetch chased me off my land.

Even going to fetch water, you could hear gunshots

and could be killed from one moment to the next...

I will kill the enemy because they killed my parents, my mother, my sister.

All these people died before my eyes.

They also killed some of my flock of cows and goats,

for that too I will kill them.

Without the drought that forced us to migrate,

the father of my children would not have gone to Todenyang,

he would have kept his cattle and would not have been killed.

A lack of water�!

This is the obsession of millions and millions

of humans on the planet.

And what if one day our taps suddenly stopped running?

That is what happened in Spain!

Barcelona, Spring 2008.

Following a prolonged drought,

this great european city wakes up without water.

For the residents, it is a nightmare!

Water-tankers re-supply the stricken city.

Yet the people of Barcelona are among the lowest consumers of water in Europe.

How did it get to this point?

The city's population reached 5 million inhabitants,

and more and more tourists come to admire

the incredible unfinished cathedral designed by Gaudi.

Irrigated agriculture has become standard in Catalonia.

Several years of drought have resulted in reserves being emptied.

While Barcelona was parched of water,

the two rivers from which the city draws most of its water

continued to be used to irrigate crops in the surrounding area.

The affair caused a scandal!

Why not dig a canal to bring water from the Ebro,

Spain's largest river, which flows 200km further south?

It's not so easy!

The Ebro delta is one of the richest natural reserves in Europe.

Fifty thousand rice farmers,

market gardeners, fishermen and salt- workers

live in this corner of the world.

Although Barcelona is a very thirsty city,

it is out of the question that they divert some of their water!

The city finally opts for a seawater desalination plant,

despite the high cost and salty waste it produces.

This offers a respite, but not a sustainable solution,

because the plant supplies only a million people...

It's unthinkable!

Water may now be lacking in regions rich in abundant resources.

Today, it is Barcelona, although it is supplied by the Pyrenees.

And tomorrow, who will be next?

We humans have always settled near sources of water, along rivers and by lakes.

Where food can be found.

Thanks to water, we were able to leave the nomadic life

to found the first villages and invent agriculture.

The powerful attraction of water is just as strong today.

Water is vital!

In South Sudan,

the fisher people live as they did five thousand years ago!

They settled in the middle of the marshes, as close as possible to their food.

Here, the only spaces available are the old termite mounds!

The clay from which they are made

is used to build houses and even to create tiny gardens.

Here, the only source of protein is fish that is dried in the sun.

For these people, who live almost completely self-sufficiently,

it is their only trading currency with the outside world,

if by chance a boat passes by.

Water was also the first line of communication between men.

Even today, in Central Africa,

there are not many roads or railways.

It is the Congo river that still plays this vital role

by linking together hundreds of villages along its banks.

Here, an incredible means of transportation in lieu of trucks and trains are the barges

on which are piled families and goods.

Everything is bought there, everything is sold there.

They supply a population that is far away from everything.

This barge, or rather raft,

is made up of an assemblage of trunks on which merchandise has been laid any-old-how.

Upon arrival, the timber will be sold along with everything else...

The mighty Congo is therefore a huge asset for Africa,

whose population is going to double in size.

Rivers have played a major role in the development of our species.

In Mali, the city of Djenn� was created

between the arms of a tributary of the Niger,

on the edge of the Sahara.

The city took advantage of its unique situation:

it has become a major hub of commerce, a stop for camel caravans.

But not everyone is based near a water source...

Imagine it!

Walking for hours each day to go and fetch water...

I so often saw women, and even children,

exhaust themselves carrying buckets of 30 litres on their heads.

800 million people do not drink clean water.

What could be better than bringing them water?

Freeing them from this gruelling chore?

The Kayes region, in south-west Mali,

is one of the hottest places on the planet.

From here to the river is very far and very tiring,

I have to cross three ponds.

I make this journey 3, 4, 5 times in the morning

and sometimes even in the afternoon.

The trip to go and fetch water is very hard.

Leeches cling to our feet,

sometimes on the way back from the river you fall but you have to go back there.

The river water is not good,

but we have no other source of water.

I drink it against my will.

I often worry that this water will make my children ill

and that they will die, but I have no other choice.

I have never drunk clean drinking water.

I cannot say what drinking water tastes like.

Every time you arrive somewhere it's a challenge.

Every time you arrive somewhere you have doubts.

Every time you arrive in a village you hope.

G�rard Roso is probably the person

who has dug the most wells in the world:

nearly 4,000 in all of Africa!

He has adapetd oil-industry drilling- techniques to find water.

For the past two years he has worked here in Mali

as a volunteer for the Clear Water association

I look for fracture zones, that is to say,

faults that are likely to release the most water.

I also position myself according to the alignments of trees

from endemic species that are interesting indicators

for determining the greatest areas of water passage.

And according to these criteria, I position my drill.

We are essentially capturing rainwater.

This is water that has drained into the ground.

This groundwater is constantly being supplied,

which means that once we have found water,

it is unlikely that the borehole will run dry one day.

When you drill in regions like this, you do have setbacks.

Weak faults that can be found in the earth can be blocked,

so in some areas we can have a failure rate of up to 80%.

I have been waiting for this day with great joy.

We live in the bush,

so the time I save will be used to work on my garden and in the fields.

I can4t wait to have drinking water.

I have waited for this day such a long time.

I am appalled by some of the things I see.

I saw villages where there were five boreholes

and a village a litte further on

where there was not one single one.

There are so many boreholes that are out of action.

There is no one to repair them. The spare parts cannot be found.

So the pumps fail and new programmes are put

in place with new boreholes and pumps are reinstalled.

What would be smarter would be to rehabilitate wells

that are already in existence.

I feel that when I leave a village after bringing it water, it is important.

And what these people have given me, I have given something back to them too.

As the village storyteller,

I am going to ask all the village women to take good care of this water bore,

because we suffered a lot before we had clean drinking water.

I am urging them therefore to take care of it because it is precious.

In Cambodia,

you can live on one of the largest lakes in Asia

and not have clean drinking water!

800 million people worldwide are in the same situation!

It is a deadly threat that hangs over the most vulnerable populations.

The Tonl� Sap great lake has been the pantry of one in three Cambodians for a long time.

It has always supplied the population with water.

Today, urbanization and industry have polluted the water,

which is no longer drinkable.

But the inhabitants do not know this...

They have drunk this water for generations.

Here, the fishermen catch eels, with curious bamboo traps planted in the mud.

- Hey, Hello!

- How much have you caught?

- Three... barely half a kilo!

- You don't bring anything with you to drink?

- I drink this water here!

- Oh, really? And you are not sick?

- Sometimes. But what can I do?

- But this water stinks, and it is completely filthy!

Currently, the population living on the lake is growing

and year after year is becoming increasingly poor...

Here, everything costs more.

Most of the inhabitants drink water directly from the lake,

which poses health problems.

In 2010, two villages near here fell victim to

an infectious epidemic which left more than 40 dead.

Vuth, I am giving you a filter. From now on,

I ask you to stop using water from the lake directly.

It must be filtered before drinking it.

Using earthenware filters, it really is the simplest and cheapest means

of having drinking water here.

After studying in France, Chay Lo, a young engineer,

founded the association 1001 Fountains

which installs inexpensive water purification stations in rural Cambodia.

The system is very efficient:

each unit is financially independent,

and most importantly, creates jobs.

Here, people use water from the pond or river,

and especially rainwater.

Furthermore, it does not keep well.

It is stored in open jars where mosquitoes lay their eggs.

So, they have to boil the water,

but it's expensive because you have to buy wood or coal for the fire.

The water treatment process used by 1001 Fountains is very simple.

We filter the water several times, and then sterilize it using ultra-violet.

We started in 2005

and have already installed 47 stations

that provide daily drinking water to 40,000 people.

We set up a station at this school to provide free water to students.

Not everyone realizes the importance of drinking clean water,

a lot of educational work must be done to convince them to change their habits.

That will take time...

Is this water clean?

No!

That's right, it is full of microbes.

And if you drink it,

you will get stomach ache and you will vomit...

Supplying drinking water in major cities

is an even greater challenge.

I have a dream.

To provide water to all Cambodians!

Honesty pays!

In Phnom Penh, Ek Sonn Chan, an incorruptible public servant,

has inspired confidence in international aid organizations

to rebuild the entire drinking water system in the Cambodian capital.

I have suffered personally, as has my family, from a lack of water.

The Khmer Rouge converted this school into a prison, called S21.

Here, thousands of people were murdered.

On 17 April 1975, the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh.

The inhabitants were forced to leave the city.

I was one of those people.

I was commandeered to build canals and seawalls, to produce more rice.

I worked very hard.

That is how I survived.

The 7th January 1979 marks the day of liberation of our people.

I returned to Phnom Penh.

We found the city completely destroyed. No more houses or roads...

We knew we were going to have to rebuild our country for the good of all.

In September 1993, I was asked by the Governor of Phnom Penh

to become the head of the water services department.

Even if I did'nt know anything about it,

I knew very well that water is an essential service.

But the network in Phnom Penh was worse than anywhere else:

Only 20% of the population was served, and only then for 8 to 10 hours per day.

The water was undrinkable.

Barely half of consumers were paying their water bill.

The majority of employees were at their posts only three hours per day

That's what condition water distribution was in at that time�!

We started to change people's attitudes.

Employees had to work in the interest of the company

and no longer for personal gain.

We convinced customers to pay their bill,

starting with the richest and going right along to the poorest.

We devoted all our efforts to improving access to water.

We went from connecting 20% of people in 1993 to more than 90% today!

In fact, our service is not only aimed at the rich.

We connect everyone, even the most disadvantaged families,

by giving them grants of 30, 50, 70 and even 100%.

With international assistance, and notably the French Development Agency,

Phnom Penh now has one of the best water systems in the world.

In Rio, Soweto, Lagos...

800 million people now live in slums;

makeshift neighbourhoods, built illegally, where destitution is rife.

Their number will have doubled by 2050.

The world is urbanizing so quickly,

that providing water and sanitation at this rate

is almost mission impossible with the resources

currently being allocated.

Why are water-related diseases so common in developing cities?

Because most people do not have toilets!

2,5 billion people have no toilets.

Unaware of the danger,

the population itself contaminates the water it drinks with its own excrement.

Infected water kills more than 4000 children around the world, every day.

In Kenya, in Nairobi, Kibera is the largest slum in Africa.

I have rarely seen such difficult living conditions.

Here, my heroine is Annete the toilet lady, who is educating the population!

I am proud to work in public toilets,

because I know it is important to encourage people to be hygienic.

My children get sick because of our poor living conditions.

You can see, my house is not healthy at all.

A sewer runs right past my door, the toilets are discharged into it.

Flies come into the house.

There are also mosquitoes that bite the children.

That's how they get sick.

The children from Kibera who come here mainly suffer from diarrhoea.

There is excrement everywhere in Kibera because people have no toilets.

Children play in filth. They put their hands in their mouths.

They eat foods that have not been washed, so they get diseases.

And it can become very serious because they do not always have access to medical care.

Many children die from dehydration caused by diarrhoea and vomiting.

I am always afraid of my children falling sick

and getting diarrhoea

because when it persist, they get dehydrated and lose blood.

This is why I am so afraid of this disease...

This also has an impact on family budgets. When a child has diarrhoea,

the parents must spend a lot of money on medical care,

when they are already lacking in everything.

And when a child is sick,

one of the parents cannot go to work and earns nothing during that time.

Sometimes it is the eldest child that misses school to look after the patient.

Before, in Kibera, people used "flying toilets",

that is to say they were defecating into a plastic bag,

that they threw onto the rooftops!

That is why we have built public toilets, so that our neighbourhood is cleaner.

If I catch someone using mobile toilets, I will encourage them to change,

I will tell them that if they cannot pay the 3 shillings,

they can use the public toilets for free.

Not everyone reasons like me, but I am committed to serving the community.

We started with 13 people, now more than 150 use the toilets,

this is an improvement.

Toilets, this is good.

Treating the waste water is even better.

I admire the resourcefulness shown by the poor,

to transform a problem into a solution.

Calcutta, with its 16 million inhabitants, is built on the Ganges Delta.

The third largest city in India is, so to speak, bathed in water.

But in the poor neighbourhoods,

daily life is regulated by taps that only run for several hours per day.

The city has worked out how best to use this water that is everywhere:

it has entrusted the care of processing sewage water to the fish!

The canal system that irrigates the city carries the excrement of inhabitants

to a marsh area of 8000 hectares, on the outskirts of the city.

It's an industry that supports thousands of people!

My name is Shyam, I work on a fish farm.

We are 18 fishermen, starting at 7 in the morning in the harvesting team.

We leave on board fishing boats and fish with nets.

Then we bring the fish to shore.

Human waste is broken down by bacteria.

Plankton feeds on it, grows quickly and in turn feeds the fish.

Once the pollution has been digested, the water, now purified, can return to nature.

Production is much greater here than elsewhere, which is why there are more jobs.

Fish is also much cheaper here than in town!

This incredible water treatment plant is an economical and ecological solution

that supports over 100,000 people!

Nearly a quarter of humanity

still lacks access to water and sanitation worthy of the name!

But the United Nations recognized this fundamental right in July 2010

and installation of these essential services is underway in many countries, like Senegal.

Recognition of such an important right owes much to the commitment of a great woman,

Catarina de Albuquerque.

I found her in a poor neighbourhood of Dakar, where she has already worked.

I'm happy to see you again. How are you? - I'm OK!

- I've come back. I so loved being here.

Ultimately, this international right to water, what is it?

It's the first time in history

that all the United Nations member states have agreed to say:

water is a right.

Everyone on earth should have a minimum amount of water

for domestic and personal purposes.

This resolution changes the balance of power

and requires States to take measures to ensure that those who do not have power

can have access to water and sanitation.

It gives the opportunity for people to go to court, as I saw happen in Costa Rica;

the people of a small village stopped the construction of a canal

that would take their water to golf camps and hotels...

We are seven billion people on this Earth.

With the problem of drinking water and sanitation, are we not losing this fight?

Yes, we are losing the battle, particularly because the population is growing,

the numbers are increasing.

A billion people defecate in the open air.

Sanitation must not be treated as a taboo matter,

because no one wants to talk about "shit",

we must talk about "shit", issues must be faced openly.

Measures must be taken to resolve the problem.

There are solutions. It is a matter of political will.

It is a very profitable investment.

For every euro or dollar invested, there is a gain of nine, fifteen, thirty dollars.

- How come?

- Because less money is spent on health, people go to school and to work.

Water is an extraordinary vehicle to lead people and countries out of poverty.

It can be achieved.

Bringing water, sanitation, dignity to everyone.

It can be done!

It's a question of will.

Making things change faster than they have done until now.

Providing clean water to the most vulnerable, it's great.

But clean water, on our planet, does not stay clean for long,

because we have picked up the very bad habit of throwing our dirty water out into nature.

85% of our wastewater is not treated.

Not only is this water unusable and lost!

But it contaminates our drinking water resources:

rivers, lakes, underground water...

We are poisoning ourselves!

France, which practises intensive agriculture, is the European country whose

underground water reserves are the most polluted.

Brittany reminds us of this every summer,

when the beaches are covered with green algae.

Today, the region has 14 million pigs!

And this village has more pigs than people.

Is that reasonable?

Their nitrate-rich excrements are used as fertilizer in the fields.

Nitrates seep into the soil and get into the rivers

and then reach the ocean.

Algae feed on them and thrive...

Algae are not toxic.

These horses out training are not at risk, no more than the mussel farm in the bay:

on the other hand,

the gas released as they decompose on the beaches can be fatal.

This pollution, repeated year after year, demonstrates our inability to change things.

Politicians, farmers, consumers: we are all responsible.

While waiting for a solution, the villages of the C�tes d'Armor

have found out how to recycle pig manure, they convert it into biogas,

which heats 4,500 homes.

In China, on the other hand, pollution is of an entirely different magnitude.

This country, which produces most of the objects that surround us,

retains the pollution of its thousands of factories.

China is polluting for us!

300 million Chinese no longer have clean drinking water.

No one drinks tap water in the cities any more.

Crops are contaminated by polluted irrigation water.

The rivers are dying...

Look at this beautiful little river:

it has been poisoned by a tannery that has reduced the fishermen to destitution.

But things are beginning to change, thanks to the courage of a commited lawyer.

There was one of those layers of polluted mud on the riverbed.

It was forbidden to sell our fish.

They said it was poisoned and that it could not be eaten, either.

So we were forced to throw it away.

We could not make a living any more.

It was very hard!

It was very hard for them, but this lawyer agreed to defend them.

Wang Canfa created the first Chinese association

for defending victims of pollution.

He obtained the equivalent of 100,000 euros in damages for the fishermen.

The victims, these fishermen, are illiterate and uneducated for the most part,

they are at the bottom of the social scale,

that is why companies had no qualms about polluting.

Now, the mud has been removed, the water is clearer.

Over the last two years, the fish have started to return

and farming has been able to resume.

We won a victory,

but more importantly, we gave them back hope and confidence.

They know now that they can protect their environment and defend their rights.

That is the most important thing!

China is no longer a lawless zone for

the environment, and things are changing quickly!

Ma Jun, a former journalist, has created a website that lists all the companies

in his country that have been convicted for water pollution.

At the moment, we have more than 86,000 violations

from 50,000 companies recorded in our database.

The majority are local Chinese companies.

But we also have a quite large number of companies coming from other countries:

America, Europe, Japan, Korea, Australia and others...

All those big brands come to China to take advantage of the lower manufacturing costs

and do not care about the environment.

But now, with our list of polluters, we see that these companies,

who used to pay fines year after year without solving their pollution problems,

are starting to feel some pressure.

Most attempt to come into line and do everything they can

to be removed from the list.

In Shanghai, the most polluting companies

were regrouped in a gigantic park, away from the city...

But they are not on Ma Jun's list.

Each of them is connected to the only existing sewage plant,

which processes 25,000 tons of sewage per day.

Almost as much as all the Rhone valley's industries.

Discharges are constantly analysed,

to detect and treat all pollution immediately.

This allows this giant industrial complex to return clean water to the sea...

Even if our preoccupation with pollution is recent,

controlling water is an ambition as old as the world.

Throughout history, great civilizations have flourished

thanks to the harnessing of water.

Over 1000 years ago, the Khmer, ancestors of the Cambodians,

thought up an ingenious system of irrigation canals

that allowed three rice crops per year.

The great city of Angkor Wat is testament to Khmer power.

It lasted until the collapse of this ingenious hydraulic system...

In the twentieth century, water management is practised on a large scale.

Dams, canals and dikes have allowed the incredible development of our societies.

But are we immune to the disasters of the past?

In Autumn 2011, Thailand experienced the largest flood in a century.

The long-awaited monsoon took on the aspect of a tsunami.

Here, I notice one more time that climate change

isn't hypothetic, nor theoritical, but a reality.

Millions of people and 15,000 businesses were affected,

12% of cultivated land flooded.

Some inhabitants, under water for weeks, had to move onto the rooftops.

A regional disaster, but with global consequences:

Here is where 60% of the world's hard drives are manufactured.

The global electronics industry was paralyzed.

For car manufacturers, the losses are huge.

Thailand is the world's largest exporter of rice.

30% of the crop was lost.

The surge in prices has affected the lives of tens of millions of Asians and Africans.

The temples of Ayutthaya, the ancient capital,

founded in 1350, were flooded for the first time.

The canal system that had protected them up until then, had been abandoned...

As for the dams on the river that runs through Bangkok,

they were unable to contain the rising waters.

Man forgot that he could not control nature...

In China, controlling the rivers has obsessed leaders for millennia.

Mao developed a passion for the subject.

The country's history is marked by floods that left millions dead.

The only dikes built along the banks of the Yellow River over the last fify years

have required more building material than the Great Wall!

The Chinese have learned to repel the attacks

from water that have been repeated hundreds of times.

Filling in the slightest gap.

Standing firm against the invader!

Floods continue to rage.

In 2010, there were more than 3,000 deaths and 15 million affected.

800,000 hectares of crops were lost...

Yet, China has built on its territory nearly half of the large dams in the world.

Today however, it is above all the lack of water that is of concern to the chinese.

China has 20% of the world population but only has 7% of water resources!

The Yellow River, which irrigates the north of the country,

was pumped out down to the last drop to supply giant cities,

So much so that one day in 1997, the river stopped reaching the sea!

The government put in place a river- water management system,

from its source to the delta, from a distance at the control station,

operators can open and close the 70 locks that feed the irrigation canals.

Any province that exceeds its quota has its water cut off by the authorities!

The river is under control, but water is still lacking.

How can this be fixed?

What if the Yang Tse, biggest river in China,

would give a little more to the Yellow River

Mao had the idea first

Today, his wish is coming true.

A huge water-transfer project from the

south to the north of the country is under way.

It must connect the Yangtze to the

Yellow River by canals, and beyond that supply the Beijing area.

The Three Gorges Dam, the biggest dam in the world,

is the centrepiece of this project.

It should allow the northward transfer of a waterflow equal to half of the Nile.

The Yangtze itself is starting to run out of water...

Our development has grown as much as our mad water needs

To meet this demand, 50,000 dams have been built worldwide.

But today?

Their huge size, the forced displacement of tens of millions of people,

destruction of aquatic life, everything puts their legitimacy into question.

We now know how to mitigate their impact by reducing their size,

and populations displacements cannot be ignored anymore.

The dams generate electricity using the power of water.

A clean renewable energy which we can ill afford to lose in the future.

In the Italian Alps, the autonomous region of Val d'Aosta is exemplary,

it knew it that water was her first wealth; and how to value this heritage

by building more dams in it's mountains.

It's electrical production exceed it's population's needs,

so that it exports the surplus to the rest of Italy and Switzerland

Dams have also played a major role in agriculture.

Irrigation has enabled agricultural yields to be doubled.

They have helped to save millions of people from starvation, particularly in Asia.

But we will need much more water to feed the 9 billion people

who will live on the planet in 40 years time.

Today, irrigation accounts for 40% of global food production.

From now on, it should use less water while being more efficient.

Because agricultural demand will continue to grow strongly,

to feed an ever-increasing population that is consuming more and more meat.

Now, it takes fifteen times more water

to produce a kilo of beef than it does a kilo of cereal!

Fifteen times!

Some countries are already short enough water to feed their people

and are forced to import it.

Not in liquid form of course, but in virtual form,

hidden in cereals, fruits, vegetables

and meat, aboard ships that are sailing back and forth across the world.

Virtual water is a ghost river whose flowrate is twenty times that of the Nile.

It continues to grow as our trade intensifies,

but also because of the water shortage in a growing number of countries.

For example in Egypt, one third of water

consumed comes from another continent,

because the Nile water is not enough to feed the country's 80 million inhabitants.

When Egypt buys what it needs from the USA to supplement its wheat production,

it saves on the huge amounts of water required to grow it.

But virtual water also has unwelcome effects...

Cotton, a huge consumer of water,

alone accounts for one quarter of all such exchanges.

Five times the annual rate of flow of the Nile!

In central Asia, cotton cultivation has turned into a disaster.

The Soviet regime went as far as diverting the two great rivers that fed

the Aral Sea in order to irrigate the desert.

See the result: it lost 90% of its water in 50 years!

Millions of people reduced to poverty.

A tragedy called by the United Nations:

"the greatest ecological disaster of the twentieth century".

All this to make our shirts and our jeans...

Let us not forget that it takes 2,700 litres of water to make a shirt,

11,000 litres to make a pair of jeans!

Here we are drying up a sea.

Elsewhere we are exhausting non-renewable ancient underground water resources,

as in Jordan.

These fields stopped being cultivated when the water-drilling ran dry...

Half the world's population depends on

a non-renewable water resource for its food.

It's a disaster waiting to happen.

India has been successful in stopping famines

by having massive recourse to irrigation,

but reserves are depleting

and 175 million farmers are threatend by hunger.

In Rajasthan, an arid region, the water tables are dry

and the villages are trying to replenish them by storing monsoon rains

that fall during only a few weeks of the year.

These women show incredible courage:

they dig by hand, themselves, - yes, by hand!- huge basins to store water.

I couldn't believe what I was filming...

We dug the reservoir. Who else would do it?

I dug it, with the help of others.

There is no harvest when there is drought.

We have good harvests only when there is rain.

Rain water is vital.

When there is water in the rivers and reservoirs then there is water in the wells.

Water in the reservoirs is essential to supply the wells.

We can irrigate the fields.

In this way, we have something to harvest.

India depends on the monsoon, but it is no longer as regular,

probably because of climate change.

Farmers must therefore adapt to survive.

We suffer grievously from the instability of the monsoon.

When the rains arrive, they fall randomly.

Either you have no rain when you need to sow, or it pours down at harvest time

and you lose what little you have produced.

Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned activist.

Her fight for a water-efficient agriculture

that is more resistant to the vagaries of climate,

has brought more than 500,000 farmers out of poverty.

When we were using chemical fertilizers, we needed lots of water,

by using natural fertilizers such as compost, we need less water.

Cow dung mixed with plant residues is in fact a very rich fertilizer

that also keeps in soil moisture.

This new agriculture lays on the selection of natural seeds

that need less water and are more nutritious.

For millet varieties we do not need much water.

However, peppers, tomatoes and onions need more water.

And if it has not rained for a fortnight, I must irrigate the fields immediately.

Millet, there is nothing better! It is 40 times more nutritious than white rice.

This cereal is our weapon against hunger!

So if one Indian in four is hungry,

if one in 2 children have been sacrificed in the last fifteen years of globalization...

we must move towards nutrient-rich crops that require less water.

Increasing biodiversity is our second plan of action.

Mixing crops protects the soil.

When you grow a single species in rows,

the earth is bare and you lose the little moisture

that there is through evaporation.

With these crops that cover the whole field,

each drop of moisture is retained in the soil.

Multi-cropping is a very effective method to

achieve food security while conserving water.

Here in this field we have corn, cucumbers and also beans...

Each farmer that we train shows the example to a hundred others.

Because during bad years they have a better harvest

than those who practise chemical agriculture, and during good years,

they have as good a harvest as they do.

They also have better revenues

because they don't spend money in seeds and chemical products.

Throughout the world, small farmers are finding ways of increasing their production

through better management of water.

They are at the forefront in this fight against hunger.

Rice feeds nearly four billion people.

It's the most commonly grown cereal in the world.

It is cultivated by hand, mainly by small producers to feed their families.

But it is very water-intensive cultivation.

In Cambodia, bold farmers

are trying a new cultivation method that can double yields while using less water!

It is true that the harvest is much bigger, it has practically doubled.

With the usual method, I did not even have enough to feed myself.

I had to buy rice to supplement my diet.

With what I produce now, not only can I feed my family,

but I can even sell it to the wholesaler buy other things.

The method is very simple: just replant the young seedlings

only two or three weeks after the rice grains have germinated.

They then immediately resume growing and sprout much faster.

Myself, I could not believe my eyes.

Normally I transplant many large seedlings at the same time

and that didn't provide any shoots.

Whereas now, with one little seedling, I get up to 20 shoots.

It is mainly to avoid weeds that rice is usually planted in water.

But it thrives best when the soil is not flooded.

The well oxygenated roots grow faster.

In 2010, we were only three using the new method.

By 2011, we were twenty.

I think that in 2012, 2013, we will be countless,

since apparently everyone wants to start doing it.

At first the others laughed.

Now, when they see it, they all come to congratulate me!

Feeding these populations will depend on a multitude of local solutions,

adapted to the climate, soil and crop type.

In the western United States, for the farmers water is not yet scarce,

but it is coveted by cities that will do anything to get hold of it.

This semi-arid region is facing water-sharing difficulties.

Agriculture and cities have grown far beyond the possibilities offered by nature.

Huge improvements have allowed water to be brought from distant mountains.

But it's not enough anymore.

But cities are continuing to grow and still lack water.

They will now look to the countryside, where it is still available,

and they are willing to pay full price.

Water has become a commodity and the market will decide its use.

During the conquest of the West, water rights were distributed

to the first farmers that arrived there.

These rights are passed on from generation to generation, and can be bought or sold.

Owners have an allocated water quota

that they can draw from the river or the water table.

It is this quota that they can sell.

I hear two voices in my head.

That of my father who worked so hard to pass this land on to me

and who said to me: "You cannot sell this land,

you cannot sell this water".

But I also hear the voice of the market and my banker who tell me:

"Listen, it's more money than you can earn perhaps in your entire life.

It's the right choice!"

At night, that's what keeps me awake.

This land probably stopped being irrigated in the mid 1970s.

The owner decided to rent the water or sell it, and this is the result...

I practise irrigated agriculture on the other side of the road

and look at the difference:

every year, I have good corn harvests thanks to irrigation,

whereas over there are not much more than weeds.

On my farm, I have two sources of water: my wells and the river.

I chose to use my wells first

and foremost to rent my surface water to other farmers

who need it for their crops.

Here, to irrigate, we have good water that comes from the mountains.

We probably have the oldest water rights in the country, some even go back to 1860.

But many of these canals have been drained to meet the pressing needs of cities.

Representatives from certain cities recently came to my area to buy water rights

and that has raised the price of land.

You really start to wonder

if you will have water for very much longer...

As the market dictates its laws, water prices are going to go up more and more,

and more and more people are going to sell their water rights.

To continue to live off the land, our cultivation methods will need to change.

We will use less water,

with mobile irrigation systems, or drip watering systems.

Only by doing it like that will we be able to save our farming community.

I know a family in which none of the three daughters wanted to take over the farm.

Therefore they decided to sell and they made millions of dollars.

You cannot blame them, since this farm had no future anyway.

If they wanted to sell their farm,

no farmer would have had the means to buy it with his water rights.

They were able to sell it to the city, as it has the purchasing power.

So, selling water is easy, but suddenly

the land becomes impossible to cultivate.

You know, the richest man in my farming community

is someone who sold his water rights.

He is not considered as someone who failed but as someone who sold his community.

When a farmer sells his lands and water rights,

it creates disputes between those who have and those who do not.

This causes damage in the community, it creates a division.

It changes the way your school is run, the way your church is kept...

These transfers of water change many things.

We love our job and we would like it to last forever,

but it probably will not happen like that.

Increasing the price of water as happens in the United States and elsewhere,

and developing a water market, also encourages economising it.

But water is not only an economic asset.

And if we let the cities take all the water from the agricultural sector,

we will not be capable of producing enough to feed the whole population in the future.

The need for water is so strong that it creates local conflict,

but it can also unite people with very different cultures and requirements.

In Africa, the Senegal river is an example of cooperation

between neighbouring countries.

These women who come to draw water or do their washing along the riverbanks

show us to what degree populations are dependent on river water.

In this region affected by severe droughts,

two million people draw their supply from it or their daily needs.

Not only mothers, but also fishermen and livestock farmers...

In 1989, Mauritania and Senegal went to war over water.

But with Mali and Guinea, they have learned how to manage the river together.

Today, every decision about irrigation, energy production and navigation,

is taken unanimously.

Especially with the help of the French Development Agency,

they even financed the construction of two dams that they jointly manage.

This is unique in the world!

In the case of shortage, the local population takes priority.

In the future, an agreement between states

will be essential to prevent conflict by sharing the water of large rivers.

To get on together and share, here is the solution when the resource is scarce.

I absolutely wanted to go to South Sudan, this brand new country,

the 193rd to be recognized by the United Nations.

It has one of the largest swamps in the world.

A natural wonder, born of the Nile waters and populated by rare species

and millions of migratory birds.

This marsh is a unique natural system, dating back several million years.

In the wet season, it becomes as large as Greece.

It moderates the climate of an even huger area

and regulates the flow of the great river.

But it is also the domain of a people with great courage: the Dinka.

They are probably more than a million, living at one with their cows.

They choose them for the beauty of their hides

and the elegance of their immense horns.

They protect them from insects by covering them with ashes

and by constantly burning dung fires.

The cows are so important to them

that they give their name to people and places.

In this region, water is as precious as oil.

When the marsh got threatened, the Dinka defended their kingdom.

Egypt and Sudan had begun to dig a canal

to prevent water from the Nile going off to the vast marshes, to vanish into thin air...

They hoped in this way to recover the equivalent of one tenth of the river flow

without worrying about the consequences for local people...

But the Dinka rebelled. They took up arms.

They attacked the site and stopped the work before the canal was completed.

It is gradually filling with vegetation, closing an open wound

over a distance of 200 kilometres.

I have long wanted to see this amazing machine

that the Dinka silenced thirty years ago.

Even greater than I imagined.

This 2,300 tonne excavator, as high as a five-storey building,

dug up enough soil every minute to fill an Olympic swimming pool!

This machine testifies to the tension that reigns over water resources.

The marsh was spared, but what about tomorrow?

What issues will hang over the marsh and these forgotten people,

faced with 250 million thirsty residents of the Nile, who are demanding ever more water?

87% of the world population today has access to drinking water.

This is an extraordinary advance in our century.

But there are still nearly a billion people

for whom drinking water is a daily obsession.

Yet since 2010, for the United Nations,

access to clean water has become a fundamental right for for all humans,

that governments have pledged to respect.

I would like to end this film with a reality, a line in a report,

that has been, read, said, repeated too many times...

4,000 children still die every day because of unsanitary water.

For the sheperds we filmed in Turkana,

and who have died since in the conflict that opposed them to another tribe in the region.

Subtitles Diego Moraes(oakislandtk) www.opensubtitles.org