Sanne Derks Discusses Water Scarcity Across the Globe

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And finally, tonight, something most of us take for granted, water. On World Water Day, we look at the shocking number of people who don’t. Four in 10 people do not have enough safe drinking water and more than 2 billion human beings live in countries where water is scarce. In Cuba, which is after all a tropical island, some towns only have water two hours a day every five days. I am joined now by Dutch photographer and anthropologist, Sanne Derks, who has been documenting this water crisis and Cuba’s famous band-aid repair work. Sanne Derks, welcome to the program. I wonder what first got you involved in documenting this crisis, which very few people know about outside Cuba.

SANNE DERKS, DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHER: Yes. Exactly. That was my starting point, I guess. So, during previous visits to Cuba, I also noticed the daily water struggles in the streets and I got fascinated by it, especially since I am from a country where we have an abundance of water. I am from the Netherlands, and I want to know more about this. So, I started to look into what are these struggles. And also, because I did not expect to be — there to be a scarcity of water in a tropical island. I mean, I would expect to have — to see a lot of rainfall. And I – – yes, I didn’t expect there should be some water issue. So, I started it as a story. And then I went into it, I thought I need to go deeper. There is so much more to explore. And, yes, in 2019, the Cuba approved a new constitution, and the right for clean drinking water was part of it. So, that was very fascinating. So, we —

AMANPOUR: And we have that picture, of course.

DERKS: Yes.

AMANPOUR: We — you know, you have written — you took a picture that actual shows that, the water tank in front of the capital. That was — you were saying, well, if there’s a right, why isn’t their running water?

DERKS: Yes. Yes. Exactly. There, it was very visible because there is — yes, they have, yes, granted the right, approved the right for clean drinking water in the constitution. And even in front of the capitol building, there is already a shortage and the water tanks have to bring the water around. So. you see there are lots of limitations and difficulties in guaranteeing the freshwater access. And I wanted to explore, yes, how you can execute such a right when there were several limitations.