Talking Water on Blog Action Day 2010
Water, water everywhere but not a drop to spare. Blog Action Day is upon us, and this October 15th, the world is taking to the web and talking water! Tweet me some water? Not possible. But we can talk water. It’s a problem and a big deal.
Did you know more people have access to a cell phone than access to a toilet? We don’t stop to think about it often enough that lack of sanitation is the world’s biggest cause of infection and spread of disease, and it’s this continued lack of unsafe water that causes 1.2 billion people to have no facilities at all!
It’s safe to say a huge percentage of us are spending the bigger portion of our days sitting in front of and staring at our computer screens and scrolling through Twitter and our RSS readers to see what’s new in the world — we’re not spending hours collecting safe and clean drinking water from a well several kilometers away. But thankfully, we’re not just consuming widespread information while we interact digitally with the outside world — we also happen to do quite a bit of contributing, by joining and and pushing conversations forward to promote positive social change. This has fostered the internet as the perfect venue to raise REAL WORLD awareness for global issues…like today’s champion of internet ‘gossip’ or ‘trending topic’: water, our most sacred diminishing resource!
While I was (and still am) wrapping up another post, and thinking and writing about real-world implications from the amounts of data and flow of often-false information we are exposed to today, I couldn’t resist joining Blog Action Day when I stumbled upon it…on where else but the Twitterverse? It’s one of the rewards of being enabled with one of the greatest organization tools society has had thus far, to be able to unite with thousands of bloggers from around the world to post about water with the aim of sparking a global discussion and driving collective action. Sparking discussion it certainly is accomplishing given there are already 135 participating countries and over 4,000 registererd blogs.
From the good people at Change.org:
Blog Action Day 2010: Water from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.
“Right now, almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. That’s one in eight of us who are subject to preventable disease and even death because of something that many of us take for granted.”
“Access to clean water is not just a human rights issue. It’s an environmental issue. An animal welfare issue. A sustainability issue. Water is a global issue, and it affects all of us.”
Writing this post immediately after a nice hot shower in my apartment is fitting as I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to such a basic activity I often take for granted. To wake up in the morning, make coffee with water, drink a glass or two of water to battle the dehydration that follows my coffee, and cook with ingredients that undoubtedly required gallons of water to appear in my kitchen in the first place is something to be grateful for everyday. At the most obvious level, our second most basic human need — food — requires our first basic need — water.
We’re using more water than we think…just take a look at the water footprint of products we use daily and calculate your water footprint. (Really nice poster of our water footprint here)
You would think with the earth being covered in water there’d be enough for us all. But even with water covering 97% of our dear planet Earth, there are very few drops to drink and we simply can’t live without water. Water as a human need for survival is here to stay, but given the diminishing supplies of water today, will there be enough to support us all in 30 years? In 50 years? What about in 200 years? We’re in a water crisis, and with everyday toxins destroying our least abundant resource, it’s a bleak look forward into our future that is drying up.
Water, like free education and free healthcare that is available in many countries around the world, is a human right to all! Help the cause and change the facts of our future!
Some water links to peruse:
Simple and unexpected ways to save water
Water footprint
8 Facts You Didn’t Know About Water