World Water Day: 1 BILLION people lack access to clean drinking water »
Posted By jcolman 1 year, 7 months ago in NewsEvery eight seconds, a young child dies from lack of water or a waterborne disease. That's the same as a 747 jetliner full of kids going down every hour. The majority of water-related diseases are linked to what humans are doing to our land and water, so investing in more conservation of natural resources is also an investment in humanitarianism.
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Jonathon D. Colman is the associate director of digital marketing for The Nature Conservancy, where he manages the strategic development and promotion of the Conservancy ...
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eddie1071 year, 7 months ago
Good Point David, Imagine the possabilities of desalinated water piped into dessert areas where there is nothing, and could in a short time, support life and food for sarving people of the world.
As long as Education is carried along with it, the world can only progress, but if education is shunned violently as it is today by the middle east, progress will only go in reverse.
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eddie1071 year, 6 months ago
Some creatures have adapted to survive in the desert, but deserts as a whole, do not support very much life. 1 square meter of rain forest supports and promotes thousands of times more life than dry sand.
Australia was once a great forest, then it turned to grass lands, Man arrived and turned it to desert by burning everything. Does that mean that it is better off being a desert? That is rediculous.
Life needs water. Man will inevitably over populate and destroy everything, but if all the liberals are going to save all the babies of the world, you better have some freakin water for them or shut up.
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Natureboy1 year, 7 months ago
"Imagine the possabilities of desalinated water piped into dessert areas"
MMMMM, dessert areas...drool...
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elzorro21621 year, 7 months ago
I like what you have pointed out DH, as conservation is our responsibility in many levels. Although we need deserts as one of the world ecosystems, the fact is that the Sahara has been growing at a rate of inches per year. IN the Middle Ages, North Africa was mostly a forest. Carthage was a properous region that was rich in wheat and grain. Sonething must be done before most of Africa turns desertic.
Z
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Blackacereturn1 year, 7 months ago
I think the unfortunate end to all this is that we are now incorporating life sources, what's nest Oxygen. Its water...it is immoral on all levels to make this a business and that's where we are heading. Let's talk about the Poisoning of the fresh waterways of south, and Central America. Let's talk about the Essequibo River, " 1995 there was an acid spill in the river by the Canadian mining company Cambior. An estimated one billion gallons (four billion liters) of waste laced with cyanide was released into the river causing much destruction. Like the tons and tons of dead fishes floating to the top of the Amazon River, blanketing the surface of the water. Building dams in Africa that prohibits the flow of fresh water. This is a work in progress and like everything else we stand and watch as they do this.
The greed knows no bound, in the end we will all suffer for our ignorance or our pretense of it.
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TechnologyExpert1 year, 7 months ago
Hey, good comment David. That's one thing that many people forget. They think "dominion" equates with "use as much as you want because you own it."
Since we know that estimates are population of 9 plus billion in 2050, we definitely need to think about conservation, in all ways, not just water.
What gets me is most people bring up just ONE or TWO of the problems I can see, like pollution, global warming, deforestation, peak oil, etc. ... but add them all up and think about the confluence of disasters that could possibly be heading our way.
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m-simon1 year, 7 months ago
We could use this to lower the cost of desalinization by a factor of 10X:
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2006/11/easy-l
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david_nwpa1 year, 7 months ago
Excellent posts. I would argue that locally one thing that we need to do is clean up Lake Erie. It is the shallowest of the Great Lakes but provides a considerable amount of water for the local communities that surround it on both the US and Canadian sides. The Great Lakes contain more fresh water than any other source in the US.
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TimALoftis1 year, 7 months ago
United Nations sponsored 'World Water Day' is March 22, 2007. You can find out more at this web site.
http://www.unwater.org/wwd07/flashindex.html
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NelsonR1 year, 7 months ago
I will radicalize this story. Regardless of the functioning plans that will increase the availability of clean water, nobody is addressing the real issue, overpopulation. If you disagree with me fine but their is a finite amount of humans that can be supported by our existing environmemt.
If you condone starvation, disease and misery now present in the world than pragmatically you condone the lack of fresh water. Less humans more resources. It's obvious but the world continues to expand its population to the earths detriment. Whether it is religious or social this concept of increasing the population is and should be the primary focus. But who am I to correct misleading perceptions.
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ETproductions1 year, 7 months ago
True, David. I hate the zero sum equation. But until we know how to go into the Universe and carry breeding populations to class M planets like Earth, capable of supporting our form of life, we had better confine our survival strategies to this planet.
The downside of "responsible reproduction" ideas like confining yourself to no more than 2 kids per couple is that the information poor (a disturbingly large portion of the planet's population) either don't even get the message or have no idea why it applies to them.
The result, the information poor breed at a rate of 8 to 10 times that of the information rich. They soon subsume the planet. Is that what we want? If not, what do we realistically do about it given what we have available to do today?
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jeffery11 year, 7 months ago
You couldn't be more correct and you aren't being radical. It used to amaze me how many people can't accept that we have already overpopulated this planet but no more because delusion has no bounds.
All people have to do is not create people who already don't exist for the benefit of all including non human animals that lose their habitat to encroachment and suffer from poaching. Too many people feel it is their obligation to procreate without any consideration of the consequences except whether they can afford them. They couldn't care less that we can't afford them in the long run.
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m-simon1 year, 7 months ago
Once per capita income rises above a certain level (abou $4K a year I think) population begins to decline.
Rich people don't have babies.
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IcCaRus1 year, 7 months ago
Nelson-
i agree wholeheartedly. one of the biggest problems facing our planet is overpopulation. the problem is, who gets to tell which people to stop reproducing.
in typical human idiocy, we are reproducing at the greatest rates in areas that can least afford the new mouths to feed. if someome came along and decided to slip some sterilizing agent into the water supply in china, india, or africs, the world would no doubt be outraged, the ironic thing is that person may have done more to save lives than any1 else on earth.
a question for every1, if YOU were the Pres, and the CIA told you they could do it, and there was NO way it would be discovered, would you authorize it, or not?
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david_nwpa1 year, 7 months ago
How do we propose to pump water in the desert and keep it from evaporating? Are we going to create lakes as we did in Arizona? As for populating and prospering, we already have two countries which are mostly desert (Iraq and the Sudan) neither of which are thriving examples of how countries can prosper despite having water.
In the case of the Sudan, fresh CLEAN water or the lack of it is one of the main causes of death in Darfur. Correct me if I am wrong, but people there lack clean drinking water.
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jeffery11 year, 7 months ago
The problem is that the situation precludes most of the higher birth rate nations ever improving their income to the point that the birth rate might drop. In fact there is evidence that your argument has little validity in certain countries such as China. The wealthy in China see that it is their duty to procreate to improve the nation because their genes are better than the low class.
Also, as income increases so does the use and waste of resources. Therefore, working to simply increase income is the worst possible route. See "Researchers Tie Worldwide Biodiversity Threats To Growth In Households" at the following URL:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/01/03011
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HomeGManComment removed: User banned.
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Natureboy1 year, 7 months ago
"I've always wondered why the poorest countries where there is draught and starvation, there seems to be so many babies"
The answer is that if you live in one of those areas and you want to have progeny that survive to adulthood, you better have several babies - most of 'em won't make it.
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globalwarmer1 year, 7 months ago
Thats what nature does. Its only natural for these poor uneducated people to keep popping them out. But I still believe this planet can hold many billions more if only the Planet was properly managed. There are just so many barriers to get past like greed and religion and I don't see either one going away any time soon.
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zimzum1 year, 7 months ago
ok, so they dont have like 15 to 20 kids a piece with no food or water around ?
NOBODY LIKES TO SEE A PERSON SLOWLY DIEING WITH FLIES BUZZING AROUND THEIR HEAD, but if i kept knocking on your back door for handouts and everytime i show up i have a new child with me, would you keep feeding me? if yes, give me your address, ill be bringing all my friends.
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espse1 year, 7 months ago
I agree with your thinking Zman, I say f..k africa. Let nature (starvation war disease) control the population of Africa. They have never in the history of the planet ever come up with any viable political system outside of Warlords, no agriculture system that is sustainable. Yet they reproduce like fruit flys. The men eat first, then the women, then the children. The lutheran church is bringing Somalians over here as fast as they can. Americans are such gullible idiots. Piping water to africa will create more problems than it solves. And who will pay to increase the population of Africa.....to manufacture the desalination plants and run them, then station guards to prevent looting.....
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Amazing11 year, 7 months ago
There is plenty of water in the oceans. If the ice caps are melting and threatening coastlines, can we not solve both problems with desalinization plants? Pipe fresh water into the deserts and lower the water level at the coastlines?
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Dharma1 year, 7 months ago
Ades, i have heard this as well. Like hydrogen for vehicles it is a no win situation with our current level of technology. As a matter of fact i believe that one of the black holes of gvt funds is a desalinization plant on the rio grande that they "closed down" because it was too expensive to continue for the amount of fresh water they were getting. Now it just sits there and sucks up funding to keep it "on hold". This was a big deal a few years ago so i am not sure if it has been permanantly closed yet but i know that it once was on the "pork list" for Texas(?)......
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mumma-b1 year, 7 months ago
I think a lot of people have missed the point. It's not the amount of water it's the contaminiation of the water that is made available. This planet is able to sustain the amount of people living on it now, infact I've heard told that it could sustain twice the population we have now. When you look at how much the western world wastes in the way of food and water it's tragic. I have worked in some pretty big outfits feeding thousands of people a night,the amount of wastage would feed a village for a week. Another problem especially in the likes of India is that water has a high flouride content, it is crippling the population with skeletal fluorosis. We can no more help where we are born than actually being born so should we not do something to preserve human life on this planet? Poor have lots of children, it's simple, the more you have the higher the chances one might survive. It would only take the equivilent of one year of US military spending to fix all the worlds water problems.
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Natureboy1 year, 7 months ago
How about this- we go to composting toilets and stop flushing loads of water along with our excrement. This is a double-threat - our waste products should be returned to the soil so that the nutrients taken from the soil can be replenished- as it is, we are flushing good Sh!t out to sea, polluting the water, depleting our soil por nada.
Howabout we use environmentally friendly laundry detergent and use the water (roughly 50 gallons per load from a residential washer) to irrigate our land and grow food? We have want not because of space limitations or overpopulation, but because of foolish and irresponsible waste of resources.
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californication1041 year, 7 months ago
Uhhh evaporation? The water we drink, shall be ******ed into the toilet, which shall end up in some water treatment. Some of it will be evaporated, and some will be turned into fresh water again. Global warming cant make water disappear. Its one of the most basic laws of physics, that you cant change the mass of something, for it will always be there.
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jeffery11 year, 7 months ago
Like some of the posters below say, desalination is not an answer. It is very energy intensive, it is expensive, it threatens the health of the marine ecosystem from which it gets its water, and cannot meet the demands currently met by the free water we are now wasting. For example many western states rely on snow pack for their water which is dwindling due to climate change and the aquifer which is not being replenished at the much higher rate it is being exploited.
Desalination provides an answer only on a relatively small scale. For a better look at the problems, check out the report produced by the Pacific Institute at the following URL:
http://www.pacinst.org/reports/desalination/200606
In case the URL does not print properly, go to pacinst.org and look for "DESALINATION, WITH A GRAIN OF SALT".
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droid39131 year, 7 months ago
Even if we didn't have populted water. Still most of the Earth is undrinkable. Do you know why? Simple.. it's sault water. Here in the US, we spend billions of dollars cleaning our water supply. As for the 3rd world countries. I don't feel bad because of their curpit governments. I don't really care about other countries. I've been to some of them. It's just the way life must be.
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lvrofwolves1 year, 7 months ago
I LOVE water, it is by far my most favorite thing to drink. OMG to think about how much I've wasted in my life, it's terrible. Anyone know of a good website that helps people learn how to be more efficient? I mean besides the obvious ways....
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ningyo1 year, 7 months ago
maybe there are just a whole lot of people living in areas that cant really sustain human habitation--its caused migration and mass starvation in the past--we dont control the the climate or the weather..(contrary to what al gore thinks)..whe theres drought ..people die..animals die..its a story as old as the planet..in spite of our liberal arrogance there are some places we just shouldnt be developing or living---primary dunes come to mind..cities below sea level..golf courses in the arizona dessert..much of africa..we dont have a shortage of water..we have a shortage of humility and brains
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julie151 year, 7 months ago
This country spends Billions and Billions of dollars on war. We spend billions and billions of dollars on technogly for war machines. We kill people and tell them they should live in a democracy. When all they want to do is live a life. Instead of killing them why don't we show them how to make fresh water. Water from seawater might taste bad to us but it will keep third world nations alive. I think that America missed the boat on making the world like us. Why don't we really help people instead of killing them. It seems that the poor people are the ones who really suffer.
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ningyo1 year, 7 months ago
it might keep some people in these 3rd world area alive--if the bloodthirsty monsters who run them would let it--but they wont--you have to accept that there is evil in the world--its not all love-dovey all we need to do is negotiate with them--theres lot of areas that we could provide fresh water and in a lot of them some local war lord would take control of the supply--and it would be another means to control his people--again--a lot of the world wont do things because you ask nice or sit down and chat with them--you have to MAKE them--but that takes troops and bombs and ohh goodness we cant have that--so the children starve
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MikeReardon1 year, 7 months ago
If you check into the I think, the last February 9, 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review. The business management concept of corporate sustainability, that is finding new ways of making the most money you can from the thinnest of margins to fulfill the environmental mandates, will work well for dealing with these growing problems. Water fits well making more money with better use or less use. You know that corporate sustainability 'with tax breaks' for the social return by business, are growing as a response that business will embrace. They were pushing this at Davos, and business is trying to find a win win with mandated response to ecological dislocations.
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julie151 year, 7 months ago
What you say is absoluty true. But how much did we try. We send soldiers instead of experts. We build Air bases instead of roads. We arm rebels so they can fight the war lords. It is all war products that we sell or give. It would be much better if we did not take sides in internal conflicts. If they hurt us hurt them back. But try to save to save some.
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Searchbeam1 year, 7 months ago
This is a multi-faceted problem and it will need a multi-faceted solution:
Massive deforestation in rain forests, East Asian equatorial forests, and in general, decline in the number of trees in developing nation s has caused a serious drop in CO2 absorption and stabilization through photosynthesis. Trees do have the unique ability to stabilize aquifers and retain ground water.
Population growth is stretching the limits of what this tiny planet can support. No matter what anybody says, the resources of this planet are finite. With an increasing population, fewer resources will be available on a per capita basis. This gets us into a downward spiral. It starts to get on a geometric progression, essentially running out of control.
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Searchbeam1 year, 7 months ago
Contd..
The natural cycle of evaporation, condensation and precipitation will keep on running. However, the average global temperature will keep on rising. The excessive heat trapped in the atmosphere is energy, and it must do something! The dynamics of this thermal energy is conversion into higher wind velocity, rise in ocean temperature and in general, disruption of normal climate patterns. Although the excessive heat will evaporate more water out of oceans, the resulting storms, hurricanes and typhoons will distribute the condensation and precipitation in unpredictable manner. Humans will have no control over it. Generally speaking, entropic events and chaos will be the order of the day. The unknown will be the biggest factor in this equation.
How can we combat it? Nobody knows for sure, but certain precautionary measures will go a long way:
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Searchbeam1 year, 7 months ago
Contd..
1. Try to control per capita consumption, preferably through population-growth control, and through better consumption practices;
2. Try to plant a lot more trees than we cut down. If we can achieve a ratio of 2:1, over a reasonable period of time, we can re-forest this planet and mitigate the effect of greenhouse gases.
3. Use of renewable energy for desalination of sea water. This will help reduce the effect of global warming to some extent, but will provide potable water. A reverse-osmosis system, coupled with desalination, may be the answer.
It is a massive problem, and there may be quite a few feasible answers and solutions. I am attempting to bring some of them to the forefront.
Peace and Blessings!
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evelyna1 year, 7 months ago
Water is a renewable resource. All they have to do is wait for a moonsone or tsumari.
They charge a lot of money for water here. I pay about $75 dollars split between four people.
At my last apartment I paid o for water because it was included in the bill.
Even if people conserve how many more people will pick up the slack.
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Natureboy1 year, 7 months ago
Indeed. They may be dems or republicans, no overabundance of deep thinkers on either end of partisan politics.
Is Tsumari good on sushi? Would it be better than water in dessert areas?
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espse1 year, 7 months ago
Its the pathological freaks on the right who stopped birth control for africa. And want to stop abortion. The religious right republicans are the ones who want overpopulation, not dems.
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