World Ocean Radio - Fresh Water
We are nearing the end of the RESCUE series. This week, in its 30th edition, we're talking about water: the well-spring of world ocean health and the essential natural system that sustains us all, thus its protection and sustainability are the key strategy for RESCUE.
This week we continue the multi-part RESCUE series with defined programs and relationships that apply technologies toward public good, such as a universal grid system, battery generation and storage, desalination, and better understanding of natural systems and our relationship to them. RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.
Climate change is accelerating change to all global systems. Do we have the power and the will to break the systemic corruption of the global water cycle and take risks to intervene and change?
Millions of people worldwide do not have access to adequate water supply for drinking, cooking and basic sanitation. According to a February report, more than 3.5 billion people worldwide live in areas that experience water scarcity. This week on World Ocean Radio we're discussing the need for invention and some prospective ways forward: not just new ideas and technology, but taking what we already know and applying it differently, locally and internationally, to scale.
This week on World Ocean Radio we're weighing in on the debate of water as food. Many are certain that it is not because it does not have the same essential nutrients as food, while other maintain that it is. Is water food? We say it is--food for the soul.
This week on World Ocean Radio we're defining "backwash" as the movement of water for filtration, for desalination, and for clearing of debris and toxins, and we're discussing methods that clean and protect Nature, using the strategies of bio-remediation to detoxify and cleanse against the human-caused destruction of natural systems.
There are numerous examples of the ways that water consumption and use go unseen in our daily lives. From clothing to food, from paper to metal and wood products, from packaging to smart phones, automobiles to energy extraction, and so much more. In this episode of World Ocean Radio we argue for the ways that water use and consumption should be rated and labeled on every product we consume as a means to calculate the true cost of the most important and valuable resource on earth.
In the middle ages, alchemists for a time believed they could turn base metal into gold. This early endeavor may be the origin story for modern invention and transformative technologies that benefit mankind. This week on World Ocean Radio we introduce listeners to GivePower, an NGO working in coastal communities around the world challenged by the fresh water crisis, to turn brackish seawater into enough drinking water for more than 35,000 people each day. Could desalination be the new modern alchemy for a sustainable future: turning undrinkable water into liquid gold?
How many ways do we hear the sound of water? In this episode of World Ocean Radio we explore water, the most essential element on earth, and the ways that we need it to thrive and survive, to nourish our bodies and our souls, and to sustain our families and our communities.
This week on World Ocean Radio host Peter Neill reflects on the magic of water and the ways it defines our urban spaces. This episode focuses on Tokyo and its network of often unseen and forgotten rivers, streams and canals, and a budding plan for their restoration and revival.
Increasingly, people around the world are experiencing a fresh water crisis. More than 17 countries are under high water stress, and one fourth of the world's population faces running out of water. In this episode of World Ocean Radio we discuss the ramifications of continued and increased disruption if we cannot solve the water supply crisis through local action, conservation, protection, infrastructure improvements, and regulatory enforcement.
What if we were to accept water--in all its forms and functions--as the system around which we organize and calculate value as a contribution to profit and loss? What if we did the same thing with fossil fuels, more accurately presenting the true cost of expenditure and consequences? In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill argues that we need a new way to value water, and that if we accept water as both a basic human right and the new capital, it can become an investment of endless return.
This week on World Ocean Radio we talk about springs, those fresh water seeps that serve as an integral part of the earth's water system. We introduce listeners to a new app, Hide and Seep, developed by the Spring Stewardship Institute in collaboration with the US National Parks Service Bureau of Land Management and ESRI. Hide and Seep is a mapping software tool that allows citizen scientists to locate water sources and add them to a vast database of fresh water springs.
In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill shares a technology first developed by a team of scientists from MIT and UC Berkeley that could radically change the world by mitigating the global water crisis.
Water conflict is nothing new. We have been fighting wars over the most valuable resource on the planet since thousands of years B.C. In this episode of World Ocean Radio we highlight the Pacific Institute as a provocative source of information about the world's freshwater resources, including a comprehensive chronology of water conflict complete with historical context.
Where does water come from? We know from science that water evaporates from the ocean reservoir, is captured in clouds, fog and rain, descends to seep into the underground aquifer or be distributed via lake and stream. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill reminds us that the ocean exists at both ends of the water cycle--at mountaintop and abyssal plain--and essential to the sustainable ocean is the protection and conservation of the vast, fluid passage upon which each of us on this earth relies.
Fresh water troubles continue to make headlines everywhere. Issues large and small are adding up to a global water crisis which threatens all of us, rich and poor, no matter where we live in the world. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill will argue that the time has come for us to rethink how we manage the efficiency of our water use at all levels of society--from individual to corporate accountability to government action, conservation, and regulation.
Product labeling is a thorough and complicated business, from nutrition facts and ingredients on food labels to non-GMOS, organics, recycling information and much more. But a key component is missing from all of this labeling and accountability: the calculation of water used to grow, mine, process, produce, package, transport, and dispose of the infinite things consumers consume. In this episode of World Ocean Radio host Peter Neill will ask if it would not be useful to know a rating of water use—how much is used, where it comes from, and how production waste is disposed of—before we make an educated, mindful purchase?
How important is access to clean water? Just ask the residents of Flint, Michigan. Or the people of Cochabamba, Bolivia. Or Syria, the West Bank, Brazil, or countless other countries and communities where people are struggling with supply, access, contamination, and uncertainty. Water is THE global issue of our time. In this one hour lecture broadcast by Alternative Radio, Peter Neill of the World Ocean Observatory and author of THE ONCE AND FUTURE OCEAN speaks about why the ocean matters and what it has to do with our fresh water future.
The water crisis in Flint, Michigan points to tragic mismanagement of the city’s water supply in an effort to save funds—a decision which is destroying a community and will ultimately cost millions to fix. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill will provide examples of some of the many losses the city and state will incur as a result of this negligence, and will suggest some things that can be learned from the crisis as well as the consequences of a deliberate governmental decision to put corporate and political interests before the health of the governed.
Fresh water is the topic of discussion once again on World Ocean Radio. In this episode host Peter Neill re-asserts the gravity of the global fresh water crisis and its cyclical relationship with the ocean. He discusses the shift away from valuing oil rich nations for water rich ones, and submits that the ocean is the inevitable place we will turn for all of the resources we need for a healthy future, from drinking water to medicine, from food to security.
Fresh water shortages are making headlines everywhere. Issues large and small are adding up to a global water crisis which threatens all of us, rich and poor, no matter where we live in the world. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill will argue that the time has come for us to rethink how we manage the efficiency of our water use at all levels of society—not only by individual conservation practices but by corporate accountability, government action, and regulation.
A San Diego County Water Authority project to construct a 6-acre desalination plant, the largest of its kind in the United States, comes at a time when the traditional water supply system in California is overwhelmed by changing climate, high agricultural demand, and high consumption by an increased population. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill will describe the process of desalination, break down the numbers, and describe the objections to and development of this increasingly necessary technology which has the potential to produce billions of gallons of potable water per day.
The global water crisis and the prospects for future water resources is forcing adjustments for how we measure its use, how it is valued, and how (and to whom) it is allocated. In this fifth episode of a multi-part series on water, host Peter Neill suggests that in order to solve the fresh water problem we must first understand how much water is available and how it is being used—by understanding the “watermark” measures of use at every level of supply and demand; and he returns to the Water Footprint Network in order to outline their new international classification system for freshwater-related ecosystem services.
In last week's edition of World Ocean Radio we urged listeners to measure their water footprint using the WaterFootprint.org water calculator. In this week's episode we continue to discuss the work of the Water Footprint Network, this time by breaking down a case study which examines the true environmental impact and water consumption of manufacturing, following three Volkswagen models along their production cycle in order to glean a regionalized water inventory.
