Flow

One of the major causes of shortages of clean, high quality water talked about in flow is due to pesticides, pharmaceuticals and previous wars that pollute our water. In one of the developing countries, Palo Alto, citizens have no choice to drink the polluted water as they can’t afford it. The result is that one in ten children are expected to die before the age of 5. This was a common problem in all of the countries shown in the documentary. Companies would demand too high of a price for water, forcing people to give up their houses as water was more important to them. The documentary stated companies had to demand these prices because they needed to provide profits to investors. In Pachimada, people lost their access to water due to greedy companies like Coca-Cola kicking them out of rich water areas, destroying their lives. Before Coca-Cola came, these people were leading productive, healthy lives, and it took years of protests until Coca-Cola was finally forced to leave. The worst part is that Coca-Cola isn’t the only one doing this; Nestle and other major corporations commit the same atrocious acts. Removal of pollution due to damage already done to our Earth may be difficult to reverse, but this is one thing that definitely can be stopped. One community shown actually took it upon themselves to get water. Their people have the knowledge of how to gain access to water by changing their landscape and building constructions. It could be worth taking the time to teach other communities the same concepts so they can also be self sustaining. The community that built these constructions wasn’t the only one that found a way to get clean water either. One individual came up with an ultra violet method of purifying water and was able to secure a way of providing a lot of water to the community.