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World Water Day, 2010

Posted on 3/22/2010, under ,

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If you're anything like me, you've had at least one of your many digital news streams inform you that today is World Water Day (WWD for the rest of this post). In fact, if you're even more like me, you have never heard of this yearly observance, and would usually content yourself with noting the fact in passing, or maybe mentioning it as an offhand comment during an awkward pause in conversation.

Instead, I decided to look into it a bit more, primarily because I wrapped up a water droplet shoot with a friend of mine just yesterday, and thought it would make an intriguing post.

From the World Water Day 2010 website:
The World Water Day 2010 and its campaign is envisaged to:
  • Raise awareness about sustaining healthy ecosystems and human well-being through addressing the increasing water quality challenges in water management and

  • Raise the profile of water quality by encouraging governments, organizations, communities, and individuals around the world to actively engage in proactively addressing water quality e.g. in pollution prevention, clean up and restoration.
Before I go too far, there are a number of good resources out there on the subject. I'll include those that I have found most helpful in understanding the intent behind the observance:
  • World Water Day 2010: The official site for WWD 2010, and a great place to start. While the events that are listed have finished, it would be worth looking into some of the photos that starting finding their ways back here from those events.
  • World Water Day - Wikipedia: The Wikipedia entry on the event, with info about past years' themes and links to even more useful resources.
  • UN-Water: The official website of UN Water, and "inter-agency mechanism" for collaboration on the subject of water for UN agencies, and the group responsible for WWD.
Before you start worrying about the content of this post, this isn't going to be just another sob story. In fact, quite a bit of progress has been made in the last ten years, such that, according to UN Water, 87% of the world's population has access to sanitary water. One can also be reassured by the progress of technology in the area of water sanitization, as there exist pretty cool and easy to deploy solutions for cleaning water without electricity. Considering the fact that the last I heard on the subject was that the next wars would be fought over water resources, this is good news overall.

Of course, the earlier statistic I mentioned also means that 13% of the world (approx. 884 million people) lack access to clean water, which isn't acceptable. What further complicates matters is that the lack of clean water disproportionately affects those living in rural areas over city dwellers. From the UN Water Joint Monitoring Programme Report:
Despite the world’s population being almost equally divided between urban and rural dwellers, the vast majority without access to water and sanitation live in rural areas. Seven out of ten people without basic sanitation are rural inhabitants and more than eight out of ten people without access to improved drinking-water sources live in rural areas.
Considering all of this info, I began to become more aware of the consequences of my own ease of access to clean water. Despite all of the issues undoubtedly plaguing LA tap water, it is entirely drinkable, and thereby significantly better than anything at least 13% of the human population has access to. I won't even feed my cat this water, and yet almost 900 million humans would have their lives fundamentally improved if they had it available. Clean, safe, fresh water is so readily available to us and so taken for granted that I don't think I could have found non-potable water to use for this shoot if I had even considered the idea.

Unfortunately, there must be significant barriers to transporting this apparently plentiful resource to those who need it, else I can only assume that there wouldn't be people in need of it. In my searching on the subject, the coolest solution to the problem that I could find is a water filtration system known as a Bio-sand Filter (Wikipedia). From the article:

BioSand Water Filters are a technological adaptation of the centuries old slow sand filtration process. While implementations exist in many different sizes and varieties, the most common design is intended for use in rural homes where naturally safe or treated water sources are not available.

BioSand Filters remove 95.0 to 99.0% of organic contaminants, including bacteria, viruses, protozoa, worms, and particles. Safe water produced by the filters is free of discoloration, odor, and unpleasant taste, and can be used for drinking, food preparation, personal hygiene, and sanitation. Most common home-based models can produce between 20 and 60 litres of water per hour.

While it's easy to feel guilty about wasting water for the sake of art, I found myself feeling that I could at least do something to offset my waste, much in the way people offset their carbon footprints. I didn't find any sites specifically for offsetting your water wasting habits, but I did happen upon Charity: Water. With a little browsing, I found my way to their Unshaken program, which specifically provides clean water resources to survivors of the quake in Haiti.

A quick $30 donation there didn't mean much in the greater scheme of my own finances, but it will mean a year's worth of clean water for someone displaced by the quake in Haiti. At the very least, I will feel a bit better the next time I end up using clean water for shots like this:


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