Where's the outrage? from water.org on Vimeo.
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| Image copyright cesarharada.com Creative Commons license |
Giving up plastics is something like giving up cigarettes. Many of us stopped smoking a long time ago. We didn't want a slow, suffocating death. A lot of the PCBs, BPAs and phthalates circulating in our bodies, in our children's bodies, in every mother's breast milk, will never leave us. No one knows what slow, agonizing deaths we may be generating. There are pointers, but too few studies tell us anything for sure. Why take the chance? We need to stop ingesting them. To do that, we need to stop bringing them into our environment.
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| Nubra Valley © Dr. Gebhard Gaukler CC Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works |
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.
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.Helena Norberg-Hodge
Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, pp.20-21
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
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.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.
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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.
