aint ane Soe November 20, 2002 Features 1967, competition over water from the River Jordan was a leading cause of war. The Lebanese have accused Israel of having interests in the water of the Litani River and Syria accuses Israel to be reluctant to withdraw from the banks of the Sea of Galilee, which supplies 30 percent of Israel’s water. A UN report shows that Israelis in the West Bank use four times as much water as their Palestinian neighbours. Catalonia UN reports show that more than half of European cities are exploiting ground water at an unsustain- able rate. In Catalonia, a region of Southern France and Northern Spain, chronic water short- ages are already affecting 4.5 million people. The Spanish government is putting pressure on France to build a pipeline that would move water from the Rhone River in France to Barcelona, Spain. Mexico City The amount of water that is being pumped out from under Mexico City is causing the metropol- itan area to sink. The area around Mexico City was at one time a lush land of lakes, but it’s now one of the most populous cities in the world. Over the last 500 years forests have been cleared and lakes drained. As the city grew, the water problem was magnified. The city lacks proper drainage, allowing rainwater to mix with sewage, which is then used for irrigating crops. It is estimated that 40 percent of the city’s clean water is lost through leaky pipes that were built at the beginning of the twentieth century. Ogallala Aquifer 95 percent of the fresh water in the US is under- ground. Farmers in the American South West are pumping water from the ground faster than rain can replenish it. As a result, the water tables are dropping. The Ogallala Aquifer is North Americans largest underground fresh water source, and it’s being depleted at a rate of 12 billion cubic meters each year. Total estimated water depletion to date amounts to 325 billion cubic meters of water: a volume equal to the annual flow of 18 Colorado Rivers. The Ogallala Aquifer stretches from Texas to South Dakota, providing water for one fifth of the continental US. Many farmers are turning away from irrigated agriculture, as there is © page 20 a growing realization that water is not in endless supply. Worldwatch The Worldwatch Organization believes that con- flict over water will become more prevalent over the next 25 years. The organization claims that the regions of the world where rivers and lakes are shared by more than one nation run the highest risk of conflict. According to a UN Development Programme (UNDP) report, possible flashpoints are the Nile, Niger, Volta, Zambezi, Tigris, Euphrates, and Ganges river basins. A population is said to be in a water crisis when less than 1,500 cubic metres of water is available per person per year. It is believed that by 2025, another 12 coun- tries in Africa will join the 13 countries that already suffer from water scarcity. Worldwatch head Lester Brown believes that water scarcity is now the single largest threat to global food securi- ty. Brown states that if the combined population of the three nations the Nile runs through (Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt) rises as predicted from 150 million today to 350 million in 2050, there is going to be intense competition for increasingly limited water sources. It is not likely that Egypt is going to respond well to losing out to Ethiopia, a country that possesses only one tenth of Egypt's income. Agriculture Agriculture is by far the largest user of water, accounting for 88 percent of all water use. It takes about 1,000 tonnes of water to produce one tonne of grain. The amount of water needed to produce the annual combined imports of grain by the Middle East and North Africa is about the equiv- alent of the annual flow of the Nile. Importing grain is much easier than importing water and for this reason the UN proposes monitoring world supplies of drinking water and establishing agree- ments on the use of water. For poorer countries, importing goods is not always an option. The Table are Turning I wish I could remember the name of the biologist whom I studied about ten years ago. His last name was either Gould, or Goulding. In essence, he said during a documentary on the kambahee (a large endangered fish native to the Amazon region of South America), If we destroy the fish, we destroy life. Unfortunately fish need water to survive, as does all life. Without large supplies of fresh water, ecosystems will collapse, and life on the planet will be threatened. As the October news broadcast the threatened water levels here in Greater Vancouver, I felt increasingly tense. One of the happiest moments for me this fall was the return of the rains, although I realize, they are providing only a brief reprieve. It is difficult, living here in Canada to believe, that the world is on the verge of an impending water crisis; but the crisis is coming. the other press Chinook Jargon: the Lingua Franca of the West Coast Tom Mellish OP Contributor There were languages on the Fraser River, before the one you ar¢ reading now, full of words well worn by the span of time. Only a hundred years ago, Chinook Jargon was predominantly spoken and not English. Chinook [shinook’] Jargon, also known as Chinook Wawa o Tshinuk Wawa, was a trade language used from California, pas BC, to Alaska. It was used extensively in the nineteenth centu and first part of the twentieth century for communication betwee Europeans and First Nations to facilitate. European settlers learned it and used it to communicate wit First Nations people. Missionaries adopted it to spread their mes sage, giving sermons and publishing prayers, hymns, and cate chisms in it. Crucial to the survival of the first explorers and trap pers, this Jargon was widely shared. A somewhat uniform versio came to be used throughout the West Coast, was written down and ultimately printed up in small dictionaries and guidebooks. It use was strongly associated by many with the activities of thg Hudsons Bay Company; merchants and bankers became fluent i it, and pioneer farm families understood the Jargon. In 1890, the Oblate missionary Jean-Marie Le Jeune created 4 writing systemas orthography for Chinook Jargon by adapting thg French DuPloyer shorthand system. This writing system, referred to as wawa writing, was also used for English, Latin, and Shuswap) In Kamloops, a newspaper called the Kamloops Wawa was pub lished in Chinook Jargon using the wawa writing. By the end of the nineteenth century, Chinook Jargon was i extensive use throughout the Pacific Northwest. Here in Britis Columbia it was used most extensively on the Coast and in thq South, especially along the Fraser River. Chinook Jargon was used in industries like fishing, sealing, logging and the gathering o crops. Among the best-known of the spontaneously improvised trading tongues known as pidgins and Creoles, the Jargon is concise and limited, consisting of only a few hundred words, it became an effi cient means of basic communication, and even came to be spoked with fluency and expressiveness by those who used it frequently. Sometimes incorrectly referred to as simply Chinook, this /ingud franca consists of words and phrases borrowed from different Firs Nations languages, including Nuu-chah-nulth (formerly Nootka) There were over a hundred different dialects spoken in the Pacifi Northwest, and the Jargon was one of them. Not to be confused with the more complex Chinook language, or Old Chinook, spo ken by the people living along the Columbia River, the Jargon wa a pidgin language, meaning its words were composed of mor phemes, or word-element sequences. In the Jargon dialect of th Wishram tribe, the word acimluda, or “He will give it to you’, i composed of the elements a- “future,” -c- “he,” -i- “him,” - “thee,” -1- “to,” -ud- “give,” and -a “future.” Old Chinook is the now-extinct First Nations language of th Chinook people, whose land is around the lower reaches of th Columbia River, near Portland, Oregon. Although many Chinoo Jargon words come from Chinook, the real Chinook language i