Recently, Alexandra visited Istanbul, Turkey to participate in the World Water Forum and took time out of her busy schedule to a group of bloggers and journalists about the importance of water to people all over the world and what can be done to protect and preserve this precious resource.
There’s been a lot of discussion and talk about being green and living green in companies. What they can do to be green. And if you could talk a little bit about water and the focus of water now for you and how this plays into the whole global discussion.
I was just reading an article this morning about how water is really going to be the next critical issue that we face as a global community, as great or greater than even the economic crisis that we’re facing now. At first that might seem like a very big claim because we’re definitely all feeling the impact of the economic crisis globally and it hurts. But certainly it doesn’t hurt nearly as much as if none of us had reliable access to water. It’s very heartening to see the energy that all stakeholders are bringing to this discussion.
I always think about it this way: water is what connects us all. It’s the one thing that every single person on this planet has in common. When you think about it that way it really puts things in perspective when you realize that some women have to walk four miles everyday carrying 30 or 40 pounds of water in a jug on her head to have enough water for her personal needs, and her children and her family.
I think that it really is going into the future, not only availability and quality of water, but it’s also going to be how we experience water through shifts in weather patterns. When you look at what’s happening in Australia, the devastating droughts that are really changing the landscape of that country.
It’s clear that it’s going to be an issue that shapes the world that we live in going into the future. But I would also say that there are a lot of reason to hope that in spite of the inevitable changes that are coming our way, there are ways that people have found to work together; to collaborate, to find common ground in this need that we share for water. Hopefully there won’t be as much conflict as we might anticipate now. If we can look at what’s coming and we can understand how it’s happening, then we can anticipate those changes and work together to mitigate the impact of them.
Sometimes global problems can seem so large that individuals reading this type of content feel a little powerless. Can you talk a little bit about this topic and address some things that can be empowering?
AC: Absolutely. Water is both local and global. It’s what connects us all at a global level, but it’s also something that we can as individuals in our communities have a huge impact on. There are a lot of ways that people can really engage on these issues in their community.
Just thinking about individually, using less water is a huge way to help conserve water for our communities. When you think about it in the long term, not over the course of a day, but also over the course of a year, over the course of a lifetime, all the water that we conserve adds up enormously to hundreds of thousands of gallons that one person can save in the course of a year. That’s a lot of water.
Multiply that by a community or by a city and it gets to be an enormous amount of water and a very meaningful contribution to conservation.
We also need to think about looking at what we put into our water. Biodegradable products are a fantastic way to try to prevent the urban runoff that comes from people’s homes. All of the toxic products that we use in our home to clean and to kill bacteria is going into the environment and doing the same thing, sterilizing what’s there.
Also recycling paint thinner or other toxic materials that we usually keep in our garages and recycling pharmaceuticals. You can actually take expired medicine back to the pharmacy and often they will make sure that it’s disposed of properly so it doesn’t end up in our water supply. Remember that a lot of the water treatment facilities that have been built were built only to treat human waste, so any of the other chemicals or pharmaceutical products that we put into our water is not going to be treated by the water treatment facility.
That’s a very real thing that people can contribute to preventing. And also, remembering too that climate change is impacting water, so lowering your carbon footprint actually really does help keep water in the reservoirs and keep our climate as stable as possible.
California is entering its third year of drought largely due to inadequate infrastructure to deliver water to agriculture and residents. Much of the water infrastructure updates have been delayed because of lawsuits to protect animal species. Do you see a way to balance human and animal water needs rather than policies that are detrimental to humans?
AC: California is experiencing real difficulties with water. Water managers are frantically trying to find solutions to making sure that the people have enough water for their needs and for the society. But I think we can’t erase the need for providing water to our ecosystems as well for allowing water to flow to our watersheds through the environment to people. We need the environment. We need the forests that are part of the watershed systems. We need the rivers.
One of the best ways to protect an area is to find good reason for doing so, and often times endangered species are one of the most important ways to make sure that we protect environments that benefit people.
Nowhere is this more critical than with water. Without a functioning ecosystem, we don’t have the ecosystem services that help provide water to our communities, and so I don’t think we have to choose between people and animals. I think that we need to find a way to make sure that we have water for the environments that need it and also for the people in the communities that depend on it.
Could you tell us a little bit about the reasons you're in Istanbul and what’s happening at the World Water Forum.
AC: I arrived to Istanbul yesterday from South Africa and jumped in immediately. It's been really fantastic talking with the people that I have encountered here about a shared passion, which is water.
I was able to speak with the Minister of Interior for Turkey and the CEO of Coca-Cola, Muhtar Kent, some of the local organizations, as well as international nonprofits, like Water for People. With everyone that we spoke to there was just great consensus around the importance of water for conservation and also for people and the priority that needs to be given to this issue.
[There has been] a lot of discussion also around sanitation and ways that we can, not only protect our water resources, but that we can also make sure that people have adequate access to health and sanitation, so it’s been very exciting, and I am looking forward to being able to attend more of the lectures and panels and meeting even more of the people that are leading this discussion.
Let's go back to the Web site because you’re doing some really neat things in the social media space, including working with Twitter and working with Facebook. Tell us a little bit more about that.
AC: The model that we've developed for this expedition is actually one that's quite new. When you look back at what my grandfather did in his time, all of what we now consider traditional media was emerging media back then. It was new. It was exciting. The way he used television and radio and comic books and encyclopedia series and all these things was really new and allowed him to reach as many people as possible with his adventures and his stories and his message.
Today we have all of the media that was new in his time, and is now you know considered very traditional. Some of it is even sort of teetering on becoming obsolete, but we have a whole new universe available to us on the Internet, where we're able to make content available to people for free on demand and really focus on the user experience of what we’re doing.
This is the first expedition and we have really started focusing on making sure that all of the content that we have is available to our media partners and online in the social media sites in the most engaging way possible and every day we are finding new ways to engage.
Tthe idea is not to be making a television series about these issues and about our expedition, but to be making short films that are available, on demand for free 24 hours a day to a number of different media partners reaching the largest audience possible. We need to share the message as widely as possible, so that’s what we’re doing. We found partnerships that allow us to do this work, tell these stories, and take the adventure to our audiences.
Many laypeople believe that melting glaciers provide more ready access to water, but scientists tell us that this causes flooding and can lead to drought. Can you explain how droughts and floods happen at the same time?
AC: Absolutely. Let’s talk about a specific example: the Himalayan glaciers are melting faster than any other in the world. And on the Indian side, the glaciers contribute to providing water for the Ganges River. Now as those glaciers melt faster, because the Ganges River is fed by glacier melt.
Every year the glaciers melt slowly and that provides water for the river. As they start to melt faster you have more water going into the river. And in the Ganges they're anticipating a 20 percent increase in the water flow. But when you run out of glacier, you have a decrease in water flow. And they are anticipating that there will be 20 percent or more decrease after some of those glaciers have melted or mostly melted there will be less water available for the river. That’s problematic, not only because floods aren’t good, droughts aren’t good either. We really want to have something sort of in the middle.
Also the fact that there is more water coming in the first phase makes it harder to imagine that there’s going to be a problem later on, but that’s basically how it works. The floods come first and then the drought comes later once the glacier is gone.
Do you have any personal stories of maybe an individual that you have met during your travels to India or Botswana and how the global water crisis is affecting them? Not only that, but what did that teach you?
AC: We've encountered a great deal of extraordinary people on our voyage so far, [including] the Minister of Environment of Botswana who we were hoping to meet with and hadn’t been able to reach. We were flying from Gaborone, which is the capital of Botswana, to the town of Maun, which is close to Okavango, and he was on the plane with us. It was a very small plane, so he couldn’t really escape us and we just ended up chatting and telling him about the project and he was so excited about it that after we landed he gave us about an hour of his time to do an interview.
There are some stories that are really uplifting about the Okavongo Delta. It was so pure. It was so beautiful. The water, literally you could drink it from the river. And I have never experienced anything like it. Animals were plentiful. Enormous amounts of effort and time and energy are going into protecting it. All sorts of different stakeholders are coming together to sit around the table and discuss how to do that.
At the same time you have really sad stories about places like Camphor in India, which is on the banks of the Ganges as well. Then there are 400 canneries that are dumping their affluent directly into the river. I mean chromium, mercury, all sorts of heavy metals and toxic chemicals are going straight into the river. Where I went with my team to film, the river was black and bubbling. It was a complete dead zone. But it was actually bubbling and it was vile. But for the people who revere the river, it's also a God and they bathe in it. They use it for their agriculture. It comes out of the taps in their homes.
There are also stories that remind us that we need to really focus on these issues everywhere because the water that's flowing by Camphor ends up in the ocean, and then that's part of our global water system. It really does impact the lives of everyone; what we do with water, what we put into water, how we use water.
Veer Bhadra Mishra, one of the TIME world heroes and one of the spiritual leaders of one of the oldest temples in Varanasi said when [he] looks at the Ganges, [he] realizes that this is the same water that's flowing through Hudson Bay and that will be frozen in the ice caps one day, is going everywhere else in the world. He said that makes him feel very connected to everyone, and he's right. What we do with water in our own homes has an impact on the lives of everyone and it's important to remember that.
Can you talk about the partnership with Dasani and important role that corporations play in efforts such as the expedition and other clean water efforts.
AC: When I first started my conversations with Coca-Cola Company and DASANI about this expedition it came at a very good time. Coca-Cola in a lot of ways has been a leader on water issues, developing a whole approach to understand what water neutrality means, engaging on river conservation with WWF. All of the projects that I've seen Coca-Cola engage in on water has been meaningful and in many ways inspirational for me, especially the water neutrality idea.
I felt very good about partnering with Coca-Cola on this project because they have consistently proven to me in my conversations with representatives from Coca-Cola in India, Turkey, the United States and elsewhere that there is a real passion for these issues. [They have] a real desire to help find solutions and find a way for corporations to have a meaningful place at the table in developing new ways of thinking about these issues, bringing not only funding but expertise to the table. Having them on board for this expedition and helping me to spread the word and raise awareness and look into the future to see how we can build on what we're doing now to reach even more people, is fantastic.
What criteria do you use to select the stops for your expedition?
AC: The stories that we've chosen are really meant to represent, not just the places that we visit, but experiences that people are having around similar issues around the world.
Water and religion and spirituality are something that is pertinent to communities around the world. Whether they're Hindu, or Muslim, or Jewish, or Christian, water plays a huge role in practice of faith and that's a very important story. We just decided to tell the story in India because it was visually such a beautiful place and it's a meaningful story, and impactful in a lot of ways.
The Okavango we chose because it is archetypal in other ways: delta system, purity of water, maintaining the purity of water, protecting the water resource from dams or from hydroelectric projects in meaningful ways where our stakeholder groups and in this case, nations can still share the benefits of that water resource is incredibly important.
Obviously, we've been hearing about water wars and how there's going to be so much conflict over water in the years to come, and certainly there's a lot of places where that is very relevant. We just decided to go to the West Bank to tell that story because it is a place where there has been more water conflicts in the world in the past fifty years and a place where people are very war weary and looking for ways to take scarcity of that resource, which could lead to conflict and actually turn it around so that they can find avenues for peace and cooperation and diplomacy.
It's very relevant to all of us, I think, so all the stories are meant to represent sort of issues that we're all facing in one way or another and also to represent the interconnectivity of water on our planet.
And the more places we go, the more evident those connections become. That's very exciting because we definitely are on a mission to show the people and the stories around water and that proof that we are all connected through water and that it's – there's a lot that we can do together to protect it.