 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Reported by: CSRWire.com
Circle of Blue journalists cover front lines
TRAVERSE CITY, MI – The emergence of drought in Georgia, dwindling Great Lakes levels, and the fierce competition for water in the American West are part of a complex, urgent water crisis unfolding across the globe.
At the opening reception last week for Water Stories at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, we talked about iconic images that define and punctuate eras. Matthew Brady’s plates of the Civil War that captured the still, anonymity of death. Eddie Adams and Nick Ut’s black and white photographs from Vietnam that etched war’s horrors on our collective mind’s eye. And the first self portrait of Earth taken from the Moon. Moments that engage, involve, inform, defy, horrify, inspire.
While Atlanta suffers severe drought and the Great Lakes levels are dropping, I’m reminded of the iconic imagery produced during the Great Depression. Few are as engrossing as Dorothea Lange’s image of a migrant mother and her family. When I hear scholars speak of water refugees, I think of Florence Owens Thompson and her hardships (see below). And I think of the faces captured by today’s photojournalists, chroniclers of our time such as Brent Stirton. One of these faces of the modern water crisis is Francisca Rosas Valencia, whose tears belie the deep sorrow for her family as they leave their drought-stricken farmland near Tehuacan, Mexico.
Photograph by Brent Stirton/Getty Images for Circle of Blue
TEHUACAN, MEXICO — Francisca Rosas Valencia dabs away tears while praying for her son, Florentine, who left this drought-stricken valley to work in Los Angeles. (Read her story from Circle of Blue’s coverage in Tehuacan: Divining Destiny).
In this era of digital media, there are bound to be many iconic images from the front lines of the water crisis. Will it be the stranded polar bear looking at us with longing eyes? Or perhaps the hands of a Bangladeshi farmer, crippled by arsenic poisoning? Or the precipitous drop in a river’s flow to its delta? Or the overwhelming beauty of rainfall in the desert? These images will call to us with a duty to see. To see that so many of the world’s struggles are about water.
The photograph that has become known as “Migrant Mother” is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made of Florence Owens Thompson and her children in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California. Lange was concluding a month’s trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration. In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience:
I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. (From: Popular Photography, Feb. 1960)
Nearly three years ago, I was part of a group of journalists convened by the Aspen Institute to address climate change and why, at the time, it was so hard to look at ourselves in the mirror and admit that we had a problem. Why do we deconstruct complicated science and politics into oversimplified “he said, she said” dictations? we asked ourselves. All this while there were powerful dramas unfolding, from human migration to conflagrations of political careers. And why weren’t we doing the in-depth reporting necessary to tease out the nuances — and sweeping impacts — that climate will have on all facets of the news, from international diplomacy to lifestyle? It’s a complicated issue, we agreed, that required comprehensive, all-hands-on-deck coverage. Crucial, relevant reporting that needed the talents of every staff member in the newsroom.
We left the three-day session with a resolution to tackle climate head-on with seriousness and depth, and not hide behind excuses that the issue was too complicated, boring or politically belittled. We resolved to identify the spinmeisters and shine light on their motives. And we pledged more resources to cover climate with voracity. (See our report, Slow Fuse: Journalistic Responses to Climate Change)
The water crisis is proving to be equally complex, even more so. While it’s skipped the political hot potato stage, it’s knocking at our front door and few are listening. And the mainstream news media has been rendered incapable of answering. The depth, the vision, the resources, the patience no longer exist in our 20th-century newsrooms that are necessary to frame this extensive restructuring of the water supply on every corner of the planet.
I had coffee the other day with a leading climate and water expert in Washington who was worried that the recent attention to climate — although long awaited — would steal the thunder from the equally urgent (many argue, more urgent) crises of water. Here we have a complicated challenge that has a relevancy to everyone — from dying children in Africa to drying lake beds in Mongolia to forthcoming water rationing in Atlanta to pollution in the Great Lakes that are the water supply for the Midwest. Yet we can’t seem to muster political will for coordinated response.
Take this excerpt from Tuesday’s New York Times about the drought in Atlanta:
Others wondered why the calls to conserve came so late.
“I think there’s been an ostrich-head-in-the-sand syndrome that has been growing,” said Mark Crisp, an Atlanta-based consultant with the engineering firm C. H. Guernsey. “Because we seem to have been very, very slow in our actions to deal with an impending crisis.”
And this commentary from Melbourne, Australia:
There are alternatives to our wasteful use of water
Melbourne, Australia
John Langford
October 3, 2007
Climate change is happening more rapidly than expected and its effect on water resources seems to have caught everyone by surprise so that many of the water management plans we made only 12 months ago are now obsolete. Static plans are no longer adequate. We need dynamic planning.
Scientists seek 99 per cent probability before making links between events such as this drought and climate change. However, water managers must operate on a much lower burden of proof, as the risks are simply too great. We cannot run a city low on water while we sit around waiting for it to rain.
So here’s the Big Story of the century unfolding before our eyes and we still can’t make the connections. Most of us seem unwilling — or incapable — of grasping the gravity and intersections of the larger story. And as that slow fuse burns on this 35th anniversary of the Clean Water Act, our equitable, reasoned responses evaporate by the day.
Resources
The World’s Water – Pacific Institute
Silent Tsunami: The Urgent Need for Clean Water and Sanitation
Is the American West facing a water disaster? Reporter Jon Gertner paints a dry future in his Oct 21, 2007 cover story, ”The Perfect Drought,” in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Required reading for anyone working in water. “…if some of the Southwest’s largest reservoirs empty out, the region would experience an apocalypse, ‘an Armageddon.’”
At the 2007 Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting, Circle of Blue’s commitment to ‘to elevate the freshwater crisis to a global priority and to generate the knowledge, civic will, technology, and resources needed to solve this crisis’ was recognized. J. Carl Ganter (l), Circle of Blue director, and Keith Schneider (r), Circle of Blue senior editor, represented the project, a nonprofit initiative of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Pacific Institute, one the leading research organizations focused on water, climate, energy, environment and security. President Clinton was joined at this year’s meeting by “1,300 leaders of business, government and non-governmental organizations, who traveled to New York from six continents, including 50 current and former Heads of State.”
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia and the United States, the world’s great space powers, celebrated the eve of the first satellite launch 50 years ago with a pact to use Russian technology on NASA missions to seek water on the moon and Mars.
Perhaps through this potent partnership humanity can find clues how to better manage — and hold onto — this live-defining resource here at home.
Dr. Peter Gleick, President of the Pacific Institute, weighs in on the importance of water and its crucial role for all living things
