Water is sacred in many world religions. As Susan Barnett of the Religion News Service points out,
it is the only symbol every world religion shares. Water cleanses, sanctifies and blesses rituals around the world. But it is more than a symbol: clean water is a conduit of care and love.
In her article connecting the environmental and spiritual concerns of clean water, Barnett also observes:
Most crucially, lack of access to sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene — WASH — is a fundamental problem in tens of thousands of health clinics and hospitals all around the world. In the most remote places, pregnant women often come in from the countryside as they near labor to give birth at health care centers that have no clean water and often must bring their own. They give birth on unsanitary tables and can’t effectively wash their hands and bodies before cradling and nursing their newborns. Predictably, infections are a leading cause of preventable death for mothers and newborns across low-resourced countries.
*For more analysis of the connection between clean water as a spiritual and environmental issue, read about these photo essays developed through the Magnum Foundation and this contribution to the Revealer.