Image by kartooner via Flickr

If you live in North America, the Caribbean or certain European countries you may have seen Fiji Water. Did you know native Fijians go without clean water?

I’ve been incredulous about the growth in popularity whole bottled water thing. I can see benefits, especially when it comes to emergency preparedness. But Fiji Water seems to take the whole thing beyond incredulity.

Short Background: They drill deep into the Artesian aquifer in the remote south Pacific island nation of Fiji. They import plastic bottles from China, bottle the water and sell it in the US and other countries with people who have more money than brains. The company has been criticized by others about the whole carbon foot print involved in production. The company has taken steps to go green.

My beef has to do with the water. In looking for examples of good clean water programs, I came accross the Humanitarian Services division of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Over the last 5 years, they’ve done clean water projects in 34 countries. More about that later.

Here’s where the two stories converge. One of those projects is in Fiji. The village Navunimono gets it’s water from a river polluted by cattle grazing, runoff and other stuff. Humanitarian Services helped the village construct 3 water tanks and now they have clean water.

Jo Vitinavulagi fills the first bucket from the new water tanks.

I’m happy they have clean water now but the story points out problems around the world. What did the military dictator of Fiji do about the water problem? What about the American company taking clean water from another part of the island chain?

Here’s an example of clean water being easily available and technologically possible. But those with political and economic power chose to do nothing. The story is repeated over and over. I’ll let you know when I see more.