Water Wednesday: We are one

Tibetan Endless Knot

Philosophers, religious leaders, New Agers, even The Lion King tell us We Are One. All things are connected. Now science is in on the act.

Recently, scientists discovered that the bacteria in the oceans communicate with one another. That's not all. Phytoplankton communicate with each other as well. In fact, the so-called red-tide or luminescence we see at certain times of the year appears to occur as a result of the plankton signaling the colony that it's time to shine. Those lovely little neon tetras that glow in blues, reds and greens? They can't do that without just the right population of bacteria in their cells, in just the right numbers, talking to each other like crazy.

Phytoplankton, bacterial and viruses account for >90% of all oceanic biomass.

Kay Bidle
as quoted by Larry O'Hanlon
IM Interview: The Science of Superorganisms

Phytoplankton - Foundation of the oceanic food chain
NOAA

So what has this to do with #WaterWednesday and "We are One"? First, we need to know that bacteria, plankton and viruses make up about ninety percent of the total biomass in the ocean. Ninety percent, and they are at the bottom of the food chain.

Tiny organisms, crustaceans, and fish eat them. Those critters are eaten by bigger fish and other animals. We eat them. Sometimes the bacteria is passed along, just as Mercury and other toxic chemicals are passed along. We eat the fish. We get some of their bacteria, for good or ill.

Scientists believe that if oceanic bacteria have the means to communicate with one another, all bacteria may have the means. We just don't know about it. According to Kay Bidle, we do know that some pathogens regulate their potency much as the phytoplankton regulate their luminescence.

Another example is virulence. In some pathogens, the production of their toxins is regulated in a similar way. They won't produce it until there is a critical density of bacteria.

Larry O'Hanlon
IM Interview with Kay Bidle and Vardi Assaf
The Science of Superorganisms

That's good news for medicine, because if we can learn how disease-causing cells regulate their toxins, we might be able to use that knowledge in prevention and healing. It's never as easy as that, though, is it? We discovered penicillin and in less than a century saved untold suffering and lives. But there's a downside. Now, instead of developing ever stronger, more resistant humans, we've developed ever stronger bacteria, some call them Super Bugs, that potentially could wipe our entire species from the planet.

What's more, scientists recently discovered that sharks and fish are infected with "super-bugs" too. They don't know for sure why the marine animals have these bacteria, but they make a good case that it's because we humans excrete huge quantities of antibiotics into our waste stream. Eventually these antibiotics find their way to our oceans and the sea animals that live in them. The disease-causing bacteria that live in the oceans are inoculated with the antibiotics and develop resistance. Sea-faring super bugs escalate.

Fish farm out of Copacobana, Bolivia
© soylentgreen23
Creative Commons

Add to that enormous quantities of antibiotics hitting the waves in our salmon farms. Now, I love salmon. Lots of people love salmon. So much so that giant fish farms filled with millions of fish in a confined space--think oceanic CAFO*--are jammed together where they eat and poop all day long, pulling fecal matter into their gills along with oxygen-supplying water, and getting so sick that the fish farmers have to shoot them up, so to speak, with tons of antibiotics to keep them healthy enough to make it to our tables.

But if we are flushing antibiotics into waterways in quantities high enough to breed resistance in the fish we eat, we are only hastening the arrival of a time when dangerous infectious microbes come from the sea, preconditioned to withstand our efforts to stop them.

Michael Reilly
Antibiotics Breeding 'Super Bugs' in Sharks, Fish

There's the rub. One way and another, we're pouring antibiotics into our streams and oceans. The microscopic sea flora and fauna are reacting to them. Killer bacteria are developing ever more resistance. They can wipe out whole populations of the food chain. Those they don't kill carry the super bugs in their bodies and to ours.

Now that we know single-celled organisms communicate with one another as a colony, signaling, "Hold off a bit, there aren't enough of us to light up," or "We have reached critical mass! All systems are go for killing off this shark!", we need to step back and ask some serious questions. As we pour more and more antibiotics, pesticides and fertilizers into the oceans, how will the signaling we only recently discovered, and have yet to understand, be affected? In turn, how will those changes affect the animals and fish that depend on the microorganisms for survival? That includes us. We are One. Everything we do is connected to everything else.

It's possible that my mitochondria are talking to your mitochondria right now, but I can't hear them, so I'm opening the cyber-room for discussion. Where are you on the continuum of "everything we do is related to everything else"?


*CAFO: Confined Animal Feedlot Operation

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

Water Wednesday: Dung-fired ceramic water filters save lives

Abundant Water saves lives by teaching people to make their own water filters with materials at hand. Watch this.

A handful of clay, yesterday’s coffee grounds and some cow manure [sic] the ingredients that could bring clean, safe drinking water to much of the third world.

The Australian National University in
New filter promises clean water for millions (pdf)

The filters can clean a liter of water of dangerous pathogens in two hours, so a family will need several to provide a day's water, but they can make the filters themselves, as many as they need.

Unicef has a similar program to provide larger clay filter systems. Theirs are manufactured in a factory setting and must be distributed.
 



One way and another, clay filters are saving millions of lives. What's your #WaterWednesday story?

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Gratitude to Radiance, who introduced me to the work of Abundant Water.

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted,
copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

Water Wednesday: Price of a human life

Where's the outrage? from water.org on Vimeo.

We don't live in the world of Ordinary yet. Can you save one life this #WaterWednesday and bring us a little closer?

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

 

Water Wednesday: Water wise

Nubra Valley
© Dr. Gebhard Gaukler
CC Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works

Water crisis. Water famine. If you're paying attention to water news, you know that for many, these are not words, but facts of life.

Worldwide, nearly one in six people have no access to safe water.

Two and a half of those six (crazy statistic, yes?) have no access to a toilet.

Think of your six closest friends and family members. Line them up in your head. Pull one out and imagine her dipping her hands into disease-infested water, cupping them, bringing them to her lips, again and again--every day of her life. Pick two or three from the lineup and imagine them squatting in the street, their street, your street. No tissue. No place to wash up afterward.
That's our world right now.

Water wise

In the Himalayan valleys of Ladakh, where the annual rainfall is less than four inches, the primary source of water is snow-melt and glacial runoff. Opinions differ how long that runoff will last, if we don't stop polluting our atmosphere and are unsuccessful slowing climate change, but any one who lives in the region or has visited the Himalayas over time knows the glaciers are retreating dramatically. While some predict water famine is at hand for billions in India due to glacial shrinkage, for the time being, the Ladakhi, those who are fortunate still to farm traditionally, may not have to suffer.

They've been water wise for hundreds of years, perhaps dating to the fourth century A.D. In her book, Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, Helena Norberg-Hodge gives us a glimpse of Ladakh use of glacial runoff to green their valleys.

In most villages, irrigation is regulated by a churpon, who is appointed or elected from within the village. He operates the flow of water, blocking and opening the canals as required. Householders are allotted a certain period of time every week when they can divert the main channels into their own fields.
Watching a mother and her two daughters watering, I saw them open small channels and, when the ground was saturated, block them with a spadeful of earth. They managed to spread the water remarkably evenly, knowing just where it would flow easily and where it would need encouragement: a spadeful dug out here, put back there; a rock shifted just enough to open a channel--all this with the most delicate sense of timing. From time to time they would lean on their spades and chat with their neighbors, keeping one eye on the water's progress.

Helena Norberg-Hodge
Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, pp.20-21

The Ladakh are careful, too, to avoid contaminating water for those using it downstream. Dr. Norberg-Hodge tells of washing her clothes in a stream shortly after arriving in Ladakh.

Just as I was plunging a dirty dress into the water, a little girl, no more than seven years old, came by from a village upstream. "You can't put your clothes in that water," she said shyly. "People down there have to drink it." She pointed to a village at least a mile farther downstream. "You can use that one over there; that's just for irrigation."

Helena Norberg-Hodge
Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, pp.20-21

Barefoot College--Learning and teaching water wisdom for 38 years

Many villages in Ladakh still manage their water in traditional ways, but others in India are not so fortunate. For myriad reasons, they have forgotten, lost or stopped using traditional water management skills and tools.
The Barefoot College in Rajasthan has been relearning, reclaiming and marrying traditional ways with modern technology, then teaching it to ordinary citizens from rural communities since 1972.

Preservation and accessibility of water in poor rural communities, has been of primary concern to the Barefoot College since its inception in 1972. This holds true particularly for communities that suffer from scarcity of water or are drought-prone, as well as those that lack hygienic sanitation and drinking water sources.
...
Rain Water Harvesting (RWH) is a lost cost method with maximum benefits. It provides sweet water for drinking to not only people but also livestock; both, important criteria for rural communities that depend on agriculture and animal husbandry. RWH helps to replenish or rejuvenate groundwater tables directly as well as indirectly. While some methods of RWH like trenches, anicut, contour bunding, and dug wells recharge groundwater tables, directly, by holding the rains long enough for the soil to absorb, other methods like construction RWH underground water tanks and small ponds, indirectly, help to preserve groundwater by creating alternative sources of water for people and livestock, thus reducing the use of groundwater for at least 4-6 months.

Barefoot College

Still, there remains a vast, unmet need to help families and entire communities develop life-saving, potable water connections as quickly as possible. Water.org is one organization I've mentioned before that is on the site and on the job. This is one of their success stories.

Taking heart

Our global village is expanding in many ways, as we get to know one another better and learn from each another. I'm deeply heartened by the examples of the Ladakhi, the 38 years of experimenting, training and building of the Barefoot College, and the many national and international organizations focused on saving lives through simple projects like those of water.org. Each in their own way are working to build a world more like that of the Village of Ordinary, and I give gratitude for them.

Share and tell!

Each of us has a unique contribution to make. What is yours today? It doesn't matter how great or how small, I'd like to hear about it. If you have a helpful water wise or #WaterWednesday link to share, (as long as it's not spam, which results in instant comment deletion), I'd love to see it.

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Special thanks to Abhishek Nayak for pointing me to Barefoot College.

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

Water Wednesday Action: Stop an Arctic repeat of the BP Gulf oil disaster

Watch this. It's short enough. While you're watching, imagine how such a spill could affect us all if it occurred in the Arctic. The United States expects to begin drilling there in July. Unless we stop it. This is a #WaterWednesday call to action. I'd wager you'll understand the need in less than the 3 minutes 41 seconds it takes to view the vid.

Even as BP's oil continues to spew unabated into the Gulf of Mexico, Shell is pushing forward with plans for exploratory drilling off Alaska's arctic coast. If Shell gets its way, drilling will begin as early as July [emphasis added].

BP Deepwater Disaster and Gulf Oil Spill,
Greenpeace

We can stop it, but we must act this moment
Follow the "Join us ..." link--It will take only a minute

Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior for the Obama administration, has the authority to stop Shell in its tracks.  Join us in making sure he does so.

Neither the disaster unfolding in the Gulf nor the one that is imminent in Alaska are necessary to maintain a strong economy. Renewables like wind and solar, paired with energy efficiency, have the potential to meet all of our energy needs. We are calling for an immediate stop to new offshore oil drilling.

BP Deepwater Disaster and Gulf Oil Spill,
Greenpeace

Thank you, Greenpeace. You said it all so much better than I could.

UPDATE May 27, 2010: According to CBS today:

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says in a report to be delivered to the White House on Thursday that he will not consider applications for permits to drill in the Arctic until 2011. Shell Oil was to begin exploratory drilling there this summer.

This gives us a reprieve, but does not stop the drilling. We must continue to voice our opposition to putting our environment and ourselves at risk when there are so many renewable resources available to us. Stay tuned.

Have you been following the oil spill? Did you take a moment to Tell Secretary Salazar to Just Say "No" to Shell's Alaska Drilling? What more can you and I do to ensure nothing like this happens again?

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace
All rights reserved.