Gonzalo Delacámara: "There are more people in the world with a cell phone than with a toilet"

BarcelonaGonzalo Delacámara is an economist and international expert on water security. He is a water policy advisor to the European Commission, the OECD, the World Bank and the UN and a professor at IE University.

An image to accompany him.

— Women in countries like Bangladesh or India wait for the sun to set before going out to do their business. And they go out in pairs because there are organized gangs that take advantage of these moments to sexually assault them. How their lives would change if they had such a basic infrastructure as a toilet!

Are there many people who don't have it?

— There are more than 3.5 billion people in the world without access to safe sanitation. That means there are more people in the world with a mobile phone than with a toilet.

And drinking water?

— If I told you that there are more than two billion people without access to clean water, it would mean that in a few days we would have to celebrate more than two billion funerals.

You are right.

— This is the most terrible thing. People who do not have improved access to water continue to drink it. More than two billion. That's 27% of the world's population. This means a whole host of diseases. And it means that there are women in Africa spending more than four hours a day fetching water.

How many people have been displaced by water?

— Today, these problems – not only water problems, but also heat waves and droughts that cause hunger – are causing the forced displacement of 120 million people. Of these, the data is very important: nine out of ten remain within the country. The United Nations projection is that in 2030 there will be 700 million. And in 2050, 1,200.

How do we solve it?

— It is essential that we become aware that we are part of the same species, the most destructive on the planet. And that we speak of challenges that, although they have very clear manifestations from a local point of view, are global.

Do we have institutions prepared?

— We already had a very precarious architecture, but right now we are experiencing a tendency towards unilateralism, towards neo-protectionism, towards locking ourselves in the idea of the nation-state that does not help us to solve our problems.

And are we citizens doing it well?

— We must be aware that we need food, and that requires water. When we write a WhatsApp, the data center company consumes water. We buy fashion and the textile industry consumes water, and it is also responsible for water pollution from the industry.

So we should consume less.

— Some consumption patterns need to be changed, but it is important not to criminalise citizens. Many may suffer from economic issues, be concerned about geopolitical tensions, or the deterioration of democratic culture. And we are going to tell them that they are responsible for climate change?

And what should we do?

— We should ask ourselves: why do we have such powerful incentives to make bad decisions? Perhaps the responsibility will be to understand this, and people, from the imperfection that we all share, will be able to make better decisions. I don't think we should tell citizens what to do, but rather help them understand why they make the decisions they make and create the conditions so that better decisions can be made.

Will we see violent conflicts over water in the future?

— In the future? Right now there are armed conflicts in which water plays a fundamental role in Egypt, Ethiopia, Somalia, Turkey, Syria, India… obviously also in Israel, Jordan, the occupied Palestinian territories, etc. I am only talking about places where conflict leads to violence. Because managing water is, by definition, generating conflict.

What sites should we be concerned about?

— He think tank The World Resources Institute has a project called Aqueduct. It says that seventeen of the twenty countries with the greatest water stress in the world are in the Middle East. And it lists countries like Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon. And I think we will see very tense situations in India as well, where six of the main cities do not have guaranteed water security.

Is Catalonia in a difficult place?

— It is in one of the most challenging places in the European Union, but it is also a place where water is being reused more effectively than in many other regions. The key is to understand the difference between a temporary problem and a structural one.

Let's explain.

— Drought, however serious it may seem to us, is a temporary problem. But the challenge is structural and this requires structural solutions. Some of the infrastructures that are proposed now do not solve the drought today, but they will solve the drought of 2030. Drought is the fever, and you can take a paracetamol, but the underlying disease requires more treatment.

We started with an image, we closed with a phrase.

— I always remember the one from Democratic Senator Patrick Moynihan: "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts." It is not apparently related to water, but it seems fundamental to me with everything we live through.