As gardeners, we know that we are held ransom to water. Rain, dew, pipe, irrigation, drip, flood, spray, weep … if the water doesn’t reach our gardens somehow – or if there is too much of it or it is timed poorly – our plantings are doomed. If we were counting on that food for our own survival, as much of the world does, things would be bleak indeed.
In many, many places, there is a thick layer of dust and doom spread over the landscape. What water is available is often polluted beyond use, too salty, a vector for horrible diseases or too deep underground to retrieve. Global climate trends have forced people off formerly arable land squarely into the lap of aid agencies. Even if the aid agencies operated in some sort of idealized state – and they do not – living from handout to handout is hardly humankind’s proper state of existence.
Enter, stage left, the incredible synergy of water projects and micro-finance loans.
