Recognized as one of the US’s 100 best gold courses (Golf Digest), the ‘Sanctuary’ will once again host the 5th annual Water For People Golf Classic on August 19, 2009. Situated in Sedalia, Colorado, and adjacent to over 12, 000 acres of protected open space, the Sanctuary was carefully designed and “placed” within one of the most fragile and beautiful ecosystems in the State, if not the entire country.
Besides the comical slant of the titles, it is surprising that biogas is often presented as something amazing & unknown although it has been around for hundreds of years, is used in tens of millions of rural household and is a significant contributor to Europe’s renewable energy production.
The fermentation of organic material such as biomass, manure, sewage, farm waste, municipal waste, green waste and energy crops in the absence of air produces biogas. The same anaerobic fermentation produces swamp, marsh and landfill methane.
“Sanitation has a strong connection not only with personal hygiene but also with human dignity and well-being, public health, nutrition and even education. Mahatma Gandhi had once said “Sanitation is more important than independence”. He made cleanliness and sanitation an integral part of the Gandhian way of living. His dream was total sanitation for all.”
With these words, the Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohan Singh inaugurated the third South Asia Conference on Sanitation (SACOSAN) in New Delhi. The Conference holds a special significance because the year 2008 has been declared as the International Year of Sanitation. Themed on Sanitation for Dignity and Health, the conference is being attended by participants from over eight South-Asian countries. Startling reports indicate the PM’s constituency to have the least number of toilets within India!
I recently visited a bathroom in Peru.After snapping my photo and pondering if Peruvian men truly need that much guidance, I left the bathroom and mentioned what I had seen to my wife and mother-in-law.
Over one billion people - 18% of the world’s population - lack access to safe drinking water worldwide. Only 56% of Africa’s 800 million population have access to clean water. About 700 million people in 43 countries are affected by water scarcity, according to the UN.
In another few years - in 2025 to be precise - the number could swell to 3 billion driving back gains in the fight against poverty and under-development, otherwise known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
For many people around the world, safe drinking water is a scarce resource and out of necessity, they resort to what’s available - polluted water.
But contaminated water isn’t just dirty—it’s deadly. Some 1.8 million people die every year of diseases like cholera, caused by poor sanitation. Tens of millions of others are seriously sickened by a host of water-related ailments—many of which are easily preventable.
These facts may surprise you:
1.1 billion people live without clean drinking water.*
There are over 116,000 human-made chemicals that are finding their way into public
water supply systems.*
Water is a $400 billion dollar global industry; the third largest behind electricity and oil.*
Flow, a new film about the implications of the world water crisis, can help you wrap your head around those dismaying figures. The film, which opens tomorrow, investigates the growing privatization of the world’s dwindling fresh water supply with a careful attention to politics, pollution, human rights, and the emergence of a domineering world water cartel. Stories are told about how water has changed people’s lives and health, communities’ economies, and corporations’ bottom line. Throughout the film, we are asked to ponder “How did a handful of corporations steal our water?” and “Can anyone really own water?” For centuries water has been called “blue gold,” and after this film you will understand why.
A fleet of scientists, business leaders, and policy makers have convened at the 2008 World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden for the past week to exchange views on the world water crisis and promote initiatives to build a clean and healthy world.
Organized by the Stockholm International Water Institute, the conference this year focuses on sanitation and hygiene issues related to water, which compliments the United Nations’ 2008 Click to Continue Reading
“Over 500,000 tons of feces are openly defecated every day to the environment around the world. That’s enough to fill the 30,000-seat Stade de Genève, where the Euro 2008 football tournament kicks off this weekend, three times over. But the global sanitation crisis is not a mere game: it pollutes the very environment upon which humans depend. Providing toilets and protecting the environment would be a winning combination for people and planet”, says the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC).
The above was an opening line from an email communication sent out this week from Geneva, Switzerland by David Trouba, communications officer of WSSCC to mark events around the World Environment Day on 5 June, and the Euro 2008 football tournament.
We are told that each year, more than 200 million tons of human waste go uncollected and untreated around the world, fouling the environment and exposing millions of people to disease and squalor.
Saturday, March 22, World Water Day 2008, will be celebrated all over the world, as envisioned by the UN as an initiative that grew out of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro.
To celebrate or not; there is nothing so peculiar on World Water Day 2008, other than another statistical entry for talking shop on water issues, at least. To many of the world’s poorest, particularly in Africa, Asia and Latin America, water is costlier than oil, more precious than oil and yet less available than clean air.
For it does not make sense that most wars and regional conflicts in the developing world today are fought on the ever illusive dream of Water for All, an Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for world’s governments by 2015.
At the 2000 UN Summit, nearly all the world’s Heads of States and Governments solemnly committed themselves to the attainment of the Goal of halving, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. It is, however, increasingly evident that, among the regions of the world, Africa, and in particular sub-Saharan Africa, is falling further behind in meeting this MDG.
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