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Safe Water and a Toilet -- Is That Too Much to Ask... for 2.5 Billion People? (Includes Video Link)

by Matt Damon and Gary White - huffingtonpost.com - November 1, 2011

       

By the time you finish reading this paragraph, one more child will have died from something that's been preventable for over a century. Nearly 40 percent of the world's population is still unable to secure a safe glass of water or access a basic toilet. While we continue to rally around the goal of ensuring safe water and sanitation for all, the real question we are left asking ourselves: how do we truly confront this in a way that results in realizing our vision within our lifetime?

Even today, as solutions are known and available, lack of access to safe water and sanitation continues to claim more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.

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The Sky Is Falling In

submitted by Theresa Bernardo

by Cathy Buckle - cathybuckle.com - October 29, 2011

The chat in the queue at a government hospital Outpatients department this week was about the searing heat that has been beating down on the country in the last few days. The extremely high temperatures scorching Zimbabwe have been the national talking point as day after day we’ve looked up into dazzling blue skies without even a whisp of cloud. One woman in the hospital queue said that God must have dropped the sun, letting it fall down lower in the sky. People laughed and her words made me think of Chicken Licken, Turkey Lurkey and all their mates who were sure the sky was falling in! Someone else in the hospital queue said that this heat was a sign from the ancestors: a warning of something, although no one volunteered what. The dreaded word on everyone’s lips is ‘drought.’ Memories of hunger and starvation are still very fresh in our minds although the hunger in our recent past was caused more by political mis-governance and negligence than by weather.

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Are we reaching "Peak Water"?

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WASHINGTON, D.C. Oct. 18, 2011 — According to Dr. Peter Gleick and his colleagues in the newest volume of the most important assessment of global water challenges and solutions, more and more regions of the world, including the United States, may be reaching the point of "peak water." To conserve this critical resource without harming the economy or public health, businesses, communities, governments, and individuals are looking for new techniques to move to sustainable water management.

The World's Water, Vol. 7 offers discussion and analysis for developing those reforms. For more than a decade, this biennial report has provided key data and expert insights into freshwater issues. In the seventh volume in the series, Gleick and his colleagues at the Pacific Institute address such issues as increased conflicts over water resources, "fracking" natural gas contamination, corporate risks and responsibilities around water, and the growing risks of climate change. They specifically explore:

IT and Information Sharing Environments for Community Health Resilience

Information Technology (IT) and Information Sharing Environments (ISEs) are crucial to the evolution of community health resilience.  Most people working to improve community health resilience do not understand the nuances of Information Sharing Environments, and how the rapid shifts in IT, mobile devices, social media, cloud computing, peer to peer parallel processing, smart grids, and the linking of millions of people, mobile devices, computers, and sensors are creating a societal mind, which is transforming community health resilience and the health and human security of Americans.

If you have thoughts on these topics, please comment within this collaboratory thread.

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The Power of the 21st Century Librarian

Michael D. McDonald, Dr.P.H.

It can be argued that libraries have their origins in the swarm behavior of individuals and groups acquiring and sharing cultural artifacts (e.g, pictographs, books) as the fundamental repositories of knowledge within a community and the broader society.  Librarians have played a key role in the founding and differentiation of  America at its origins.  Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, for example, played key roles in deepening and broadening the tradition of knowledge sharing within the early United States. 

 

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The Economics of Rapidly Emerging Cities

As the human populations of our small planet exceeds 7 billion on its way potentially to 9 million or 10 billion by the mid-21st Century, migrations of millions are becoming common place -- some out of desperation, others out of seeking opportunity and a better life.  According to a large percentage of climatologists and other scientists that are studying global change, the social ecologies of many large cities will become non-viable for their human populations and many other species due to climate change, the drying up of water supplies, the lose of food sources, natural disasters, wars, and other factors.  In other cases, new cities of opportunity or attractive culture will draws those seeking a better life and way of being.  

Tens of millions, and perhaps hundreds of millions will be forced to leave their homes in search of more viable communities.  Millions more will create new communities with intentionality, exploring new economic, social, and political models that improve health, human security, resilience and sustainability for the new citizens.  In some cases, simple shared principles will shape new, fast growing economies, and, in other cases, rules and conditions will be imposed on inhabitants of new communities and cities.

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Solar Brings Clean Water to Madagascar

by Duncan Alfreds - news24.com - August 16, 2011

                          

Tenesol Madagascar provides thermal and photovoltaic solutions.

http://www.tenesol.com/-Tenesol-Madagascar,226-.html

Cape Town - Rural communities in Madagascar are receiving access to safe drinking water and electricity with a solar power project.

"Solar energy is a life-giving technology that can improve the welfare and education of a country's population," said Benoit Rolland, managing director of Tenesol.

Typical of a poor country, the majority of Madagascar's population do not have access to clean drinking water and solar water pumps are an efficient way to ensure that communities get access to water.

Solar pumps have also been installed in Zambia where it has allowed farmers to irrigate land that would otherwise not be able to produce crops.

Cost-effective

Local communities in Madagascar are trained to maintain the solar pumps to ensure that they work optimally.

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BBC: Water map shows billions at risk of 'water insecurity'

About 80% of the world's population lives in areas where the fresh water supply is not secure, according to a new global analysis. Researchers compiled a composite index of "water threats" that includes issues such as scarcity and pollution. The most severe threat category encompasses 3.4 billion people. Writing in the journal Nature, they say that in western countries, conserving water for people through reservoirs and dams works for people, but not nature. They urge developing countries not to follow the same path. What we're able to outline is a planet-wide pattern of threat” Charles Vorosmarty City College of New York Instead, they say governments should invest in water management strategies that combine infrastructure with "natural" options such as safeguarding watersheds, wetlands and flood plains. The analysis is a global snapshot, and the research team suggests more people are likely to encounter more severe stress on their water supply in the coming decades, as the climate changes and the human population continues to grow. They have taken data on a variety of different threats, used models of threats where data is scarce, and used expert assessment to combine the various individual threats into a composite index.

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