How do you love the Earth?

Starting this past weekend and through this week, I have been attending the Nashville Film Festival. I love film especially documentaries.



One of the most moving documentaries was "Flow: For Love of Water" The film brought me to tears. The movie has several main themes.

• Good clean water is hard to come by for over 70% of the world's population

• Privatation and commoditization of the water supply is leaving the poor with little money without clean water supplies in many parts of the world such as South Africa, India, and South America.
  

• There are 3 main water corporations that are displacing people from their land to build damns which are a large source of methane (greenhouse) gas. I didn't know that.
  

• Rocket Fuel and pharmaceuticals are in the water supply of 20 million people in this country.

• Atrazene which is used as a weed killer is used throughout this country. It has leaked into the water supplies and has changed the male gender to female of fish and neutred frog populations. What do you think it is dong to you? It is banned everywhere except in the U.S. and provided by a company in Europe where it is banned. Go figure.

• Parts of the West and Southwest U.S. have approximately a 10 year supply of water and they continue to build golf courses which makes that prediction more like 5 years.

• Bottled water is grossly under-regulated and in most cases no better than tap water. One part of the movie shows people buying bottled water from a fancy restaurant water menu for $4.50 to $7.95 a bottle. They are interviewed and talk about how much better it is than tap water. Back behind the restaurant they are filling up fancy bottles with tap water from a hose.
  

• Bottled water is not necessarily safer. One third of the bottled water brands tested had inorganic compounds in them.

• In some areas, the producers of bottled water are draining the local aquifers creating negative environmental impact. They are charged nothing for access to the water, they dump their waste into the environment, and they pay almost nothing in taxes. All for jobs that pay about $10 U.S. per hour. Such a deal!
  

The movie does spend time on solutions. It takes issue with The World Bank and says a little investment locally rather than a lot of corporate money privatizing the supply is more helpful and allows people in countries like Bolivia, South Africa, and India to keep their land and have clean water.

They recommend:

•  Political Activism and voting for those politicians that support the environment with specific plans.

• It recommends community and residential (in the U.S.) Rainwater Reclaimation, conservation, and harvesting. A friend of mine actually does rain water reclaimation and it works quite well.
  

• It encourages us to stop using bottled water as it is not cleaner or safer, and instead to buy reusable bottles and filter our own tap water or drill for water and pump it through a filtration system.

• They ask that we sign United Nations Article 31 which says access to clean water is a fundamental human right. Please take time to sign the petition to the United Nations here.

I met the director Irena Salina after the film Q & A session. Funding is always a challenge for them according to Irena. They want to add to their website and they currently do not have enough money to produce DVDs of the film. She gave me her contact information. Since I have been a project manager for web development in my recent past, I am contacting her to identify her projects and gather requirements for small or mini projects so funding can be obtained for something specific.

It is my opinion that they need to develop metrics and measurements of their positive impact. I am pretty good at that as well. Helps a lot with funding.

For example, she wants a web page with a world map where the movie has shown. When you click on a location, you can see what groups are locally involved in clean water issues and projects. If you know of any internet application developers interested in such a venture let me know. I would like to partner up with a knowledgeable and most excellent developer to help out this cause. I have a few local contacts, I am just not sure they will be moved for this project. That is step 2 after talking with Irena.

Stay Tuned. Please sign Article 31.

Happy Earth Day!