Another interesting article from ENN, and one that I think could help ease a good portion of global tensions, deals with the vast and growing issues of fresh water shortage world-wide.
13 August 2003
By Anna Peltola, Reuters
STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Simple innovations such as recycling household water and fixing leaky pipes would bring safe drinking water to hundreds of millions of people lacking it today, politicians and scientists said Tuesday.
More than 1.2 billion people lack access to clean water, according to the United Nations, and 12 million die of diseases caused by poor water quality each year, said speakers at World Water Week, an annual gathering of some 1,200 water experts from 100 countries.
A U.N. action plan aims to halve the number of people lacking access to clean drinking water and tolerable sanitary conditions by 2015, but little progress has been made so far.
"There are people in the semi-arid and arid areas who still have to walk about 10 hours looking for water," said Martha Karua, Kenya's minister of water resources. "That situation is totally unacceptable. Kenya is a water-scarce country, but I believe that with efficient management of our water resources, we can use the available water resources for the benefit of everybody and to cover all our needs," she said.
She said rebuilding Nairobi's crumbling water infrastructure with leaking pipes would cost more than $80 billion, but much also needed to be done to (Read on in Simple fixes could bring water to millions, say experts)
A personal quest to promote the use of wind energy and hydrogen technology in the Great Lakes area of the United States. The Great Lakes area is in a unique position to become an energy exporting region through these and other renewable energy technologies. *Update 2014: Just do it everywhere - Dan*
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