Op-Ed: An epic victory in the battle for free-flowing rivers
The fight for a river or waterway that provides clean water and is healthy is a very important issue across the world. It has been a struggle for decades and has become even more important in the wake of population growth and climate change.
The fight to protect a river in India has not yet been won, but some changes are visible. One of the most important, and most visible, is in the way of providing electricity. In some places, that’s taken a backseat.
This is an op-ed piece published in The Hill on Friday, July 24.
The battle for water
When we talk about water, it can be in terms of the rivers that flow through our lives. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which run through the Middle East, the Amazon River, which flows through much of South America, or the Nile, the Ganges and all the other rivers that flow through the world’s water supply. If we have water, we can live. Life cannot continue without water.
In addition to the rivers that we all take for granted, there are many other large bodies of water that we do not know much about, that contribute to the wellbeing of a billion or more people. These bodies of water, too, are critical to the well being of billions of people, but their importance is often largely hidden or taken for granted by us.
The world’s rivers
If we start with the world’s biggest rivers, the Nile and the Ganges, it’s clear that they contribute to the wellbeing of billions of people. Both are home to many of the world’s most important biological and cultural heritage sites. And both contain some of the world’s most important fisheries. The Nile has the only large population of hippopotamus in Africa, and the Ganges has the most important ancient Hindu temple in the world.
But they are not the only rivers that have much to contribute to the wellbeing of people. Rivers like the Caspian Sea, the Aral Sea
