An International Rescue Plan for Fresh Water

by Maude Barlow

It is widely acknowledged that greenhouse gas emission-fueled climate change is having a profound and negative impact on fresh water systems around the world. Warmer weather causes more rapid evaporation of lakes and rivers, reduced snow and ice cover on open water systems, and melting glaciers. continue… »

Water is considered a tool to exploit for producing energy allegedly having a lesser impact on climate. The “Millennium Goals” of guaranteeing access to drinking water for all the inhabitants of the planet through a market approach have been a complete failure. International movements for Water Justice demand to include the problem of water in the negotiation agenda of the Copenhagen Conference. continue… »

Water is a mirror of the human culture. The results of Copenhagen´s Conference could have fundamental effect on stopping adverse and risky trends of climatic changes on Planet Earth.

Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish in his “Memory for Forgetfulness” says about water”: Who says water has no colour, flavour of smell? Water does have a colour that reveals itself in the unfolding of thirst… And water has the flavour of water, and a fragrance that is the scent of the afternoon breeze blown from a field with full ears of wheat waving in a luminous expanse strewn like the flickering spots of light left by the wings of a small sparrow fluttering low”.

People and Water NGO encourages Slovaks to take advantage of their newly-minted democracy by organizing town meetings where citizens questioned officials about the legality of water usage. As result, in November 1996, the Environmental Ministry cancelled the dam proposal. It was Michal Kravcik, Chairman of People and Water NGO who showed how drinking reservoirs had not been used in full and how much water was wasted by an old and repair – needed distribution systems. His alternative plan outlined the repair of these problems while minimizing the impact on environment. continue… »

Water and vegetation are of primary importance for the global climate. Human activities cause large deforestation, desertification and urbanization rates of hundreds of square kilometers daily. Unsustainable land use causes huge impacts on vegetation, water and the climate. These effects are overlooked in the common climate change debate. A group of Slovak, Czech and German activists, the authors of this civic protocol, has decided to make its voice heard and to draw attention to this problem. continue… »

In this time when the world meticulously looks for possibilities of climate change mitigation and adaptation to it, we would like to invite you to the Conference „ A New Initiative for the Recovery of the Climate“. The conference will be held on 26th November 2009 (Thursday) in Conference Centre TeleDom, Timonova Str.27, Kosice, Slovakia (www.teledom.sk). A civic protocol shall be presented within the conference. The protocol is aimed at support of overlooked climate functions of water and vegetation as well as their utilization by citizens, NGO-s, local administrations, entrepreneurs, research and other institutions. continue… »

Yesterday the Washington Times hosted a briefing, “Advancing the Global Debate over Climate Change Policy,” at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. The event featured four panels, one each for lobbyists, members of think tanks, Members of Congress, and foreign policy experts. This last panel included Czech President Václav Klaus, and his excellent remarks are below:
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It is expected that the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen on 7 – 18 December 2009 will establish a global climate agreement for the period beyond 2012 when the first commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol expires. As the “Negotiating Text”2 calls for openness to proposals, we strongly suggest that the following principles be included in the text. continue… »

Four years ago Australian Story featured a farmer and horse breeder called Peter Andrews who seemed to have a rare ability to transform degraded Australian landscapes into thriving oases.
He called it natural sequence farming and it was producing some spectacular results. But for nearly thirty years, Peter Andrews’ work was rejected by scientists, bureaucrats and politicians alike until the evidence became difficult to ignore. continue… »

Introduction
All the continents of the world have been suffering from floods and droughts, fires, lack of water and food, famine, regional conflicts and climatic changes. During the last years, these phenomena have been evoking grave concern in our civilization’s future. The damages caused by water all over the world exceed hundreds of billion EUR annually. According to the prognoses, these damages tend to rise. To this, the coming economic crisis has been added bringing also unemployment with it. Nevertheless, it also brings opportunity to transfer and shift loosen work power to solve the above mentioned problems – just like it was successfully done during the Great Depression in the 30-ties of the 20th century in the USA, in framework of the New Deal program. continue… »