The teaching of Babylon

For ancient civilizations, water was a revered good. Drought, or on the contrary floods, were considered as punishments sent by a God who was displeased with mankind. In the Mesopotamian empire of Babylon (which reached its peak in the 6th century BC), it played a central role in culture and daily life. The Babylonians regarded water as a symbol of life. Their priests claimed that the gods controlled the waters of the earth and that they were a source of fertility and abundance. They built temples and shrines specifically dedicated to the water deities and devoted many religious ceremonies to them. There was Enki, the god of water and wisdom, and Tiamat, the goddess of primordial waters. According to their mythology, the universe was originally a chaos of tumultuous waters. The gods had to separate them to create the order of the world.

Living between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the Babylonians developed a civilization based on the domestication of water. Irrigation systems watered their crops and fed reserves from which they drew water during periods of drought. They built dams and canals to control the flow of water, while they used water wheels to power mills and other machinery privatization of water in nature

‘Water is the engine of nature’ said Leonardo da Vinci. Yet at the beginning of the 21st century there is a global crisis in access to water. This is evidenced by photographs of arid, cracked, dry fields, strewn with decomposing cattle carcasses... Meanwhile, multinationals are getting rich by exploiting and distributing water. Overconsumption comes mainly from productivism in agriculture, which waters corn fields with water cannons, while the slurry from thousands of pigs pollutes the ground waters. Each good produced requires an extraordinary amount of water: a kilo of hamburger requires an average of 16,000 liters of water, a kilo of chicken 5,700, a kilo of cheese 5,000 and it takes 400 to 2,000 liters of water depending on the region to produce a kilo of wheat. Textile, electronics and metalworking companies also overuse water. In everyday life, an American spends an average of 500 liters of water (including washing cars, filling swimming pools and watering lawns), it takes about 300 liters for a European. While 20 liters per person per day is considered a minimum, some people have only one or two liters. The inequality in access to drinking water is extreme. Every year, international organizations publish worrying estimates of the number of people without water (more than 800 million in 2015). A majority of them live in Africa where they are victims of water-linked diseases such as cholera, diarrhea and legionellosis.

In recent years, the major droughts that have occurred during the summer months in Europe have alerted the public authorities. In France, the state has provided 70% of the funding for a ‘megabasin’ project in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region (in Sainte-Soline). This is a retention basin that draws water in winter from the ground and stores it in basins that can hold up to 650,000 cubic meters of water, the equivalent of 260 Olympic-sized swimming pools, so that it can be redistributed in summer during droughts in the lands of multinational food companies.

This misuse of water that affects smallholders is an ultimate drift of capitalism which seeks to privatize water. In France, resistance movements have organized themselves and given rise to huge demonstrations. They suffered violent repression by the armed forces sent by the state. With many injuries and one death, these movements were banned for disturbing public order …

Globally, the problem of water supply will only get worse. If the quantity of water available on the whole of the terrestrial globe hardly varies from one year to the next, safe and drinkable water will be more and more unequally distributed while the demand will be growing. As a result of global warming, some territories must now carry out desalination, which is costly in terms of energy (solar, wind, etc.), while others are forced to ration their water reserves. It is to be expected that water resources will be the cause of geopolitical tensions.

For ancient civilizations, water was a revered good. Drought, or on the contrary floods, were considered as punishments sent by a God who was displeased with mankind. In the Mesopotamian empire of Babylon (which reached its peak in the 6th century BC), it played a central role in culture and daily life. The Babylonians regarded water as a symbol of life. Their priests claimed that the gods controlled the waters of the earth and that they were a source of fertility and abundance. They built temples and shrines specifically dedicated to the water deities and devoted many religious ceremonies to them. There was Enki, the god of water and wisdom, and Tiamat, the goddess of primordial waters. According to their mythology, the universe was originally a chaos of tumultuous waters. The gods had to separate them to create the order of the world.

Living between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the Babylonians developed a civilization based on the domestication of water. Irrigation systems watered their crops and fed reserves from which they drew water during periods of drought. They built dams and canals to control the flow of water, while they used water wheels to power mills and other machinery the water flowing under the cities

Water scarcity is also the source of a new concern: the way its natural sources have been treated in cities. In the 20th century, most of the rivers were totally covered by huge concrete structures in order to eliminate new sources of urban pollution conveyed in running water, to contain floods and above all to be able to flatten new surfaces available to clear roads and construct new buildings. Once the water sources were buried, they were radically invisible. Modern ideology then seemed to impose that the well-being of man depended on an environment made up solely of artificial soils. This is how most cities buried their waterways. Residents have become utterly unaware of the location of their underground aquifers and the rivers and streams that once flowed above ground.

At a time when the urban population lives in atmospheres saturated with pollution and worries about the ecological disasters to come, it is a concern to find a link with the tangible signs of water from natural resources. It has therefore become important to rediscover the invisible rivers that flow under our cities, to value them and to protect them. Thus a few initiatives are emerging to explore the means by which it is possible to reintegrate these water sources into the fabric of urban life. The objective is to create resilient and sustainable systems that benefit both the environment and the development of a new urban imaginary reconciled with nature.

The solutions to be implemented are of several orders. Cities can reclaim covered rivers and streams to restore them as natural waterways. Cities can create new green spaces and improve plant and animal biodiversity in their surroundings. They can also integrate water into the built environment in several ways: through planted roofs including rain gardens; diverting rainwater to fountains and water features.

On a larger scale, cities can create beautiful and functional spaces that will help manage stormwater runoff while reducing urban heat island effects.

In addition to rainwater harvesting, cities can also consider harnessing alternative water sources such as ‘grey water’ (polluted) and salt water. By diversifying their water sources, they can reduce their dependency while ensuring a more reliable and resilient water supply.

With regard to the quality of the emotional life of the inhabitants, these projects aim to re-enchant cities by rediscovering the sounds of water in neighborhoods that have become silent again, forgotten daytime or nighttime aquatic reflections and a whole poetic imagination linked to the life of a fauna and flora that we thought had disappeared forever.