Water Wise - Water Conservation and Education Campaign by Rand Water "Water Wise" is Rand Water's environmental brand. It is a campaign aimed at increasing awareness of the need to value water and to use it wisely. South Africa is a water stressed country, and the water resources are under tremendous pressure from a growing population, ongoing development, pollution, wetland destruction, alien invasive plants and the effects of global warming. The amount of water available for use remains the same, and despite plans to increase storage capacity through the building of new dams or water transfer schemes, predictions are that the demand for water will outstrip supply by 2025. The only answer to this dilemma lies in changing people's attitude and thus their behaviour to use water more wisely, and in this regard Rand Water’s “Water Wise” campaign is visionary.
Portraits of the survivors of the July 22, 2011, massacre in Norway Andrea Gjestvang/Moment On July 22, 2011, a car bomb killed eight people at the executive government building in Oslo, Norway. Shortly thereafter, Anders Behring Breivik, responsible for the bombing in Oslo, opened fire at a summer youth camp for members of the Labor Party on the island of Utøya, killing 69 (mostly young) people and wounding many more; 500 people survived. Working as a photo editor at the time, Andrea Gjestvang started taking photographs of the carnage in Oslo, using her camera to help her navigate through the horrific scene. “I was very scared and confused, almost paralyzed,” she wrote via email about taking the pictures. Focusing on the event was one thing, but Gjestvang wanted to concentrate on the repercussions of the killings in a deeper way. Her series “One Day in History” (and subsequent book En Dag i Historien) focuses on the survivors of the shootings on Utøya. To do that, she traveled around Norway to meet the young people in their homes.
Blog CICR Physics Water, sanitation & hygiene Women and girls from remote mountain villages in North Vietnam walk up to three hours a day to haul water back to their houses for cooking. Here in Australia we turn on our taps. Fresh, clean accessible water for drinking and for cooking. We all need it, only some of us have to go to the limits of human endurance to get it. Almost 900 million people in the world do not have access to clean water – or one in eight people. Unclean water, poor sanitation and unsafe hygiene practices have claimed more lives over the past century than any other cause – and this is continuing in many developing countries – making this one of the world’s most urgent health issues. So, what do we do? Get some of the world’s best water and sanitation engineers and public health specialists with a can-do attitude on to the job. Every second counts in times of crisis. Australia’s overseas aid budget has suffered from successive cuts.
Royaume-Uni : Pourquoi nous déformons notre réalité D'après une étude récente, les Britanniques ont une vision largement faussée de presque tous les sujets de société controversés. C'est peut-être la faute des médias et des responsables politiques qui leur communiquent une vision étroite et anxiogène de leur société. L'étude de la Royal Statistical Society [publiée le 9 juillet] révèle l'immense écart entre ce que les Britanniques pensent de leur pays et la réalité reflétée par les statistiques officielles. S'il n'est pas étonnant que les gens portent parfois un regard quelque peu biaisé sur certaines questions, le gouffre qui sépare leurs perceptions de la réalité n'en est pas moins monumental. Cet écart a de lourdes conséquences sur le plan politique. On peut par exemple citer le fait que les Britanniques donnent en moyenne une estimation du taux de grossesse chez les adolescentes 25 fois supérieure à la réalité. Plus d'un quart des personnes interrogées placent l'aide internationale parmi les deux ou trois premiers postes du budget.
Kosovo and the challenge of ... The Irrawaddy Water | FAO | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FAO's role in water Agriculture faces complex challenges between now and 2050 to satisfy an estimated population of nine billion. One certainty, however, is that more water will be needed to produce the estimated 60% of extra food needed. FAO’s work in water focuses on a more efficient, equitable and environmentally friendly use of water in agriculture. Issues around water that need to be addressed include: producing more food while using less waterbuilding resilience of farming communities to cope with floods and droughtsapplying clean water technologies that protect the environment Irrigation Irrigated agriculture plays a key role in food production. Water resources Tremendous progress in food production in recent years has made it possible to provide better quality food to more people than ever before. Too often, however, this is achieved at the expense of water resources and of the health of the ecosystems they sustain. Water governance Climate change and variability FAO’s work focuses on: