George Zachariah summarises one of his presentations at the Ecumenical Conversation on “Creation Justice Now! Climate Action and Water for Life” at the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches held in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Biblical reflections on the groaning of creation offer us alternative perspectives to understand the climate and water crisis. The distress of the earth is not God’s curse to punish us. Rather it is the consequence of systemic sin. As Isaiah observes, “The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst” (Isaiah 41:17). The prophet in another place explains the reason for this experience of water injustice: “The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant” (Isaiah 24:5).

A contextual scan of our waterbodies reveals that the coastal commons and the seabed are the new economic frontiers of our times. Under the blue economy, the use, access and control of the coastal commons and the seabed are transferred from the Indigenous communities to the transnational corporations. The blue economy is a threat to the economy of life as it propagates an ideology that commoditizes the waterbodies and alienates the Indigenous communities, the guardians, and custodians of the moana, from their habitat and livelihood. Hence, the campaign of the Pacific Conference of Churches for a global ban on deep sea mining, requires our support and solidarity.

Through the monetization of the waterbodies, this life-giving commonwealth is destroyed and grafted into market regimes. Accumulation by dispossession further delegitimizes the water-based traditional communities, their cultural practices, and their practices of creation care. The privatization of water has converted our sacred commons into private property. As Mark Allman rightly observes, “When water becomes an expensive commodity, it no longer functions as a symbol of God’s freely given redemptive grace; instead, it symbolizes oppression and the commodification of grace.”

We come across different cries of thirst in the Bible. The book of Genesis narrates the cry of thirst of a single mother and her child (Genesis 21: 15-19). The intimate violence on a slave woman’s body and the dispossession of their inheritance rights are the reasons for their desert experience and their cry of thirst. The story of Hagar and Ishmael provides us with a new lens to understand the contemporary crisis of water. It exposes the correlation between colonialism, patriarchy, racism, accumulation and water injustice.

The gospel narratives resound yet another cry of thirst. It is the cry from the cross, “I thirst.” It was Jesus’ unwavering commitment “to have life and to have it abundantly” that made him quarrel with the empires of his time. His system-threatening life was the reason for him to cry, “I thirst.” According to Global Witness Report, more than 200 water protectors and land defenders lost their lives in 2021 due to the violence unleashed by corporations and police forces. Jesus’ cry of thirst, therefore, is an affirmation of the divine solidarity with all who thirst and fight for water, dignity and justice.

The colonized and the dispossessed who cry for water, experience the Divine as wells and springs of water in the deserts. These laments of thirst are not the helpless cry of passive victims. Rather, they expose the inherent sinfulness of the prevailing order and demonstrate the resilience of the communities to decolonize and redeem the earth.

The book of Revelation proposes an alternative vision of water—water is a free gift for all. “To the one who is thirsty I will give to drink from the spring of the water of life as a gift” (21:6). “Let everyone who is thirsty come. Let everyone who wishes, take the water of life as a gift” (22:17). This is the vision of an economy of life where the water bodies are redeemed from the shackles of capitalism and restored as the commonwealth of all living beings. The promise of free access to clean and pure water for all is therefore the divine rejection of the prevailing political economy of privatization and commodification of our water bodies.

In the book of Revelation, we see the vision of planetary solidarity. When the water bodies are redeemed from the control of the Empire, they become agents of redemption. We experience the Divine in the blossoming of life facilitated through the creative collaboration of the relational God and relational beings. Planetary solidarity is a celebration of our planetary relationality—humans, animals, vegetables, waterbodies, minerals—celebrating our togetherness. Archbishop Desmond Tutu tried to broaden the African indigenous concept of ubuntu to include the wider community of creation, and he named it planetary ubuntu. “Practising planetary ubuntu means to widen and deepen the circle, act with love to all that we are, to our entire community, to our extended planetary being. I am because you are. We are because the planet is.”

“I can’t breathe” and “I thirst” are the laments echoing from our communities. These laments are the litany of the unheard. The future of the Church is dependent on our engagement with these litanies.