World Water Day. World Water Day is March 22 (visit www.worldwaterday.org). The UN General Assembly created this in 1992, as an outgrowth of the Rio de Janeiro Conference. For 2007, WWD's theme is Coping With Water Scarcity. Here are some sobering facts:
1) Water scarcity occurs when the amount of water withdrawn from lakes, rivers, or ground (subsurface) water is so great that water supplies are no longer adequate to satisfy all human or ecosystem requirements, bringing about increased competition among potential demands.
2) Water scarcity has also been defined as a situation where water availability in a country or region is below 1000 cubic meters (264,000 gallons) per person per year. However, many regions in the world experience much greater scarcity, living with fewer than 500 cubic meters (132,000 gallons) per person per year.
3) Water scarcity is among the main problems to be faced by many societies and the world in the 21st century. Water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century, and, although there is no global water scarcity as such, an increasing number of regions are chronically short of water.
4) 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity by 2025, and two-thirds of the world population could be under water stress conditions.
5) Remember that as part of the UN's Millennium Development Goals (www.undp.org/mdg/), we want to reduce by 50% the number of people living without access to potable water (over 1 billion) and sanitary facilities (over 2.2 billion) by 2015. To do that we have to supply clean water to about 210,000 more people each day and provide access to sanitary facilities to about 450,000 more people each day.
Here is a UN flyer on water scarcity: Download waterscarcity.pdf
And some links to relevant UN publications:
freshwater.unep.net/index.cfm?issue=water_scarcity
www.unesco.org/water/wwap/wwdr2/table_contents.shtml
If you are in Corvallis, Oregon, on March 22, come to Oregon State University's WWD Film Festival. Download iww_world_water_day_film_series.pdf
Thinking Outside the Bottle. In conclusion, I was going to do something fancy in this blog, such as use the WWD logo (www.worldwaterday.net). As I was thinking about that, I noticed way down on the bottom of the aforementioned WWW page, in the fine print, it says "Copyright 2007 Ethos Water". Ethos Water is owned by Starbucks and sells bottled water for $1.80 per bottle, which translates to almost $10 per gallon or about $2.50 per liter. For my fellow water wonks, that's a bit over $3 million per acre foot.
I won't go into a rant about Ethos Water and bottled water in general - been there, done that (you can see my 16 January 2007 post on Do You Think About What You Drink? A Modest Proposal). But harking back to that post's premise, let's think of something positive to do to help alleviate suffering due to lack of water. So for the week starting today, eschew bottled water and other "frivolous" beverages, and put that money aside. At the end of the week, double what you have, and make a donation to your favorite water charity. If you do not have one, donate to one of the following:
Ann Campana Judge Foundation www.acjfoundation.org [Disclosure: this is my 501(c)(3)]
Lifewater International: www.lifewater.org
Living Water: www.water.cc
El Porvenir: www.elporvenir.org
Pure Water for the World: www.purewaterfortheworld.org
WaterAid America: www.wateraid.org.uk/usa/default.asp
Agua Para La Vida: www.aplv.org
Flowing Streams Ministries: www.flowingstreamsministries.org
Wells for Life International: www.wfl-wellsforlife.org
Millennium Water Alliance: www.mwawater.org
Whatever you drink will taste a lot better.
" Remember, 'Evian' spelled backwards is 'naive'."
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