Image by Joseph Fulgham from Pixabay
The United Nations has declared today as World Water Day. It says:
World Water Day 2023 is about accelerating change to solve the water and sanitation crisis. Dysfunction throughout the water cycle undermines progress on all major global issues, from health to hunger, gender equality to jobs, education to industry, and disasters to peace.
In 2015, the world committed to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 as part of the 2030 Agenda – the promise that everyone would have safely managed water and sanitation by 2030. Right now, we are seriously off-track.
While there are many national and international paths to solutions. Below are some ways you can act locally to help move forward toward these goals.
Southern Oregon Pachamama Alliance (SOPA) is collaborating with Water League (WL) to envision and implement what could be – equity for all water users – while safeguarding water well-being in Jackson and Josephine counties. See more about this collaboration, get background information on the Rogue Valley’s water current status, and learn about the work of Water Action Community cohorts. Also, see information on the Rogue Valley’s water gathered during the SOPA’s 2022 Water Solutions Summit.
Also, be sure to check out Southern Oregon Climate Action Now’s page on Water Management and Conservation and its water resources page. This SOCAN item regarding the status of Oregon’s beavers is timely.
We in the Rogue Valley are not alone in our concerns for water. The National Geographic newsletter just released a story “Is tap water safe to drink? Here’s what you really need to know.” See it here.
On an International scale, The Guardian recently ran a story “Global fresh water demand will outstrip supply by 40% by 2030, say experts”. See the story here.
The group Water Stories trains and connects people who are concerned about the health of Earth in order to create a meaningful impact through what they call “Community Driven Decentralized Water Retention.” To create healthy landscapes and water abundance, they train people to transform water-sheds into water-catchments.
Water Stories has an engaging series of webinars on a variety of water topics presented by leaders in water research and practices. The latest Water Stories webinar is entitled “Biology Makes Rain, the Science of Restoring Rainfall” with Cindy Morris, a senior scientist at France’s National Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment, and Carl Struck, who has been stewarding a 40-acre Ponderosa Pine forest in Northern New Mexico. Over the last 15 years Struck’s management practices have evolved to engage the principals of regenerative agriculture in support of forest soil health and the water cycle. Watch a recording of this inspiring webinar here.
Watch this space for more about water action in the Rogue Valley and news and resources pertaining to water issues locally and beyond.