MEXICO CITY - After 12 hours of back-to-back interviews with Mexico City press, Circle of Blue team members made a mad dash back to their rooms to change clothes, grab laptops and head down to the Hotel Condesa Cinema to present a special preview of Tehuacán: Divining Destiny. Just four weeks earlier, a Circle of Blue field crew landed in Mexico for ten days of reporting for the pilot production. In the dim lights of the underground club, seven plasma screens glowed with Brent Stirton’s photographs from the front lines of the world water crisis. Staff welcomed over 150 of Mexico City’s best-known artists, entertainers, creative professionals, editors and philanthropists, as well as international water experts and scholars who were in town for the World Water Forum. I started the the presentation at 10:30 p.m., following an opening address by Dr. Scott Whiteford and the 13-minute documentary from the Tehuacán assignment. We’re enthused and tired.
MEXICO CITY - It’s going to be a great day here in Mexico City. As we meet with reporters and prepare for our guests to arrive, I just learned that the Edmund F. and Virginia B. Ball Foundation has joined Circle of Blue as a funder. The foundation board shares our vision for a better world through communications, the arts and education. It’s a thrill to have them by our side.
MEXICO CITY - Water and the Media was a World Water Forum panel discussion this morning hosted by the Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and the World Water Council. I was one of three panel members for the session that focused on the challenges of reporting on local and global water issues. Tim Cullen, former chief spokesman for the World Bank and current manager of the Asian Development Bank’s water awareness program, moderated the well-attended session. Most striking were comments from the audience about the lack of resources — even the lack of editors’ interest — in this critical global issue that touches everyone. From my perspective on the front lines, it’s the Big Story.
WASHINGTON - While we’re preparing for our return to Mexico City to showcase “Tehuacán: Divining Destiny,” the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Environmental Change and Security Program has published our working group’s papers online. (Mine is called “Navigating the Mainstream: Making Water Issues Matter.”) Included are the multimedia reports Soren Nielsen and I produced in Iztapalapa and other regions of Mexico (with editing help from Aaron Jaffe). These are mere examples of the the people, the children, the faces behind the global freshwater crisis.
