Tomorrow (Sunday, March 22) is many things to many people in different places.
The Arab world is in the first weekend of the 2026 Persian New Year, but the traditional Eid-ul-Fitr observances (that started on Thursday and Friday this week) are under war conditions, with public prayers banned and restricted to mosques.
Meanwhile, Iran hosts daily and holy mass funerals and mourn their dead thousands, while bombs rain from Israel and US bases in the surrounding Gulf States — and Iran’s response continues to surprise the aggressors like never expected.
What started as a war on Iran has turned-out instead to be a global energy war that’ll continue to affect everyone, everywhere — and like never before.
The 27 governments of the European Union (EU) can’t arrive at a common response, so they’re adjusting to the new reality of a 35% hike in oil prices in one day (bringing price per barrel to US$113.00) by capping prices, increasing taxes on petroleum producers and lowering food prices, among other steps.
In the USA, a gallon of gas at the pump has hit US $5.00 and is heading to US $8.00 in some states, while America adjust to ever-increasing higher prices for everything.
But tomorrow is also World Water Day (WWD), the-world-over and developing nations of the Global South, like the Global North, have common problems arising from natural and human threats that worsen and lengthen droughts and shorten the lives of natural underground water resources across the Planet.
Like in Africa and on the American continent, in Asia and Europe, the Caribbean’s water resources are also very-much under threat and regional leaders do treat it as an urgent agenda item at twice-yearly Caribbean Community (CARICOM) summits.
Caribbean nations have been forced to face their water problems squarely, those most affected by worsening climate conditions resorting to measures earlier out-rightly rejected — like desalination, which is actually on the region’s cards today.
Saint Lucia’s Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre has been relentlessly encouraging citizens to return to embracing traditional and modern ‘Water Harvesting’ techniques — to better use rainwater being drained into the ground during the current dry season, instead of using piped water to fill emergency tanks.
Naysayers naturally downplay the importance of ‘collecting rainwater’, blaming the government of the day for the accumulated decades of neglect that now require completely new approaches in these drier new times.
From Antigua & Barbuda to Barbados and Saint Lucia, as in Dominica, Grenada and St. Vincent & The Grenadines – indeed throughout the former European colonies in the Caribbean Sea – the old original pipelines and routes that initiated potable water services are now completely outdated and dysfunctional.
Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago are not excluded, each undergoing major reviews of their water infrastructure and how best to upgrade them to modern times – all at understandably-higher costs, but also absolutely necessary as the resource involved here is in the context of the global adage ‘Water is Life!’
Inescapable costs and price rises will follow the accelerating increase in the costs of water (and other public utilities) generated by the growing global energy crisis.
Caribbean governments live with the fact that traditional Western donor support no longer exists, as the US, UK and others cut their overseas aid budgets to boost military funding and support for wars in Ukraine — and now, against Iran.
The economics of warfare today sees US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth urgently asking the US Congress for $200 Billion to continue the unprovoked war against Iran that’s lasted three weeks.
It’s now costing the US more-than three-times what it expected would have been an overnight toppling of the Iranian administration after hopefully decapitating its top political, religious and military leadership.
There’s no doubting the possibility the world’s already seeing the unfolding of World War III, which will bring all the added effects of scarcity and inflation, with major capitals also facing very-possible recession.
Prime Minister Pierre — as incoming Chair of CARICOM and preparing to host the regional grouping’s 51st Heads of Government Meeting (July 5-8) — has strongly-signalled that, with responsibility in CARICOM’s Quasi Cabinet for Sustainable Development, Climate Change and Environment issues (including Water), the July meeting will address the accumulated Caribbean effects of the escalating war in the Middle East.
Coming exactly six months after the start of the war on Iran by the US and Israel, the Heads-of-Government meeting – still almost four months away – will give crystal-clear indications of just-how clean the future of regional water is at that time, with the combined effects of prices and predictably-expected worsening climate conditions.
But before then, much will also have to be done to show the world just-how-far the $200 Billion being sought to continue the war – in just one instance, for now – can go in solving the water crises facing the entire world.
The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) is already assisting Saint Lucia, where the national water company WASCO is about to be completely restructured anew to finally address the decades of accumulated water woes that see the most unequal distribution of water.
This is especially in the island’s north, where investments in tourism and business are being turned-down or put on hold because of water provision uncertainties and residents of communities off the main grid daily cry water nightmares, while watching the Water of life being privately trucked to hotels and other guzzling entities in the island’s major tourism and growing business belt.
Meanwhile, the Caribbean and the rest of the world brace to pay the added energy and food costs, with nations and people unable to cope simply having to prepare to advance or return to thinking about and creating innovative local solutions to imported problems – from boosting food production to going Back to Basics in every respect of Caribbean life.
But much more must also be done, immediately, to better prepare Caribbean people for the harder times ahead.