I have recently discovered a series of interesting articles about solutions to health problems using improved water sanitation technology on The New York Times’ Opinionator blog and in their Small Fixes column. Here are some highlights:

Keeping the Water Flowing in Rural Villages : “A new program was started recently by WaterAid in the north of India.  It trains local people, including many women, to repair water pumps. They now run businesses that charge villages low fees for quick, guaranteed and reliable repairs when their hand pumps break down.”

To Maintain Water Pumps, It Takes More Than a Village: This is the follow-up to the “Keeping the Water Flowing” article above. “Readers responded with many practical ideas and incisive comments — some of them speaking from sad experience — to the last column on the sustainability of water pumps.”

LifeStraw Saves Those Without Access to Clean Drinking Water: “LifeStraw, produced by the Swiss company Vestergaard Frandsen, was designed for the poorest of the poor. The personal version works like a chunky drinking straw and can filter about 1,000 liters, enough to keep a person hydrated for a year. The family version — which looks something like an IV drip that ends in a water cannon — can purify 18,000 liters, serving a typical family for about three years.”

Photo credit: Vestergaard Frandsen

Clean Water at No Cost? Just Add Carbon Credits: “Now there’s a new way to save water projects from an early death: make clean water a for-profit business, charging people an unusual price: zero. Several multinational companies, such as Bechtel and Suez, already have run for-profit water systems in cities around the world. These companies have attracted a lot of criticism, especially for the way they treat rural people and slum dwellers. The companies have little incentive to lay pipes to reach people who are far away, and if they do, they charge very high prices. I’m talking about something different: a water business run by a company that has headquarters in Switzerland, Vestergaard Frandsen, that plans to provide clean water to some of the world’s poorest people and charge them nothing. Where will the profits come from? Polluters.”

Follow-up to “Clean Water at No Cost?”: Green Strategies for the Poorest:  The author, who had discussed the LifeStraw Family in the article above, writes about how this product’s manufacturer,Vestergaard Frandsen, is planning to make money with it. “Not from the poor families who use it — they will give it away in western Kenya. Instead, the company plans to be paid in credits they can sell on the global carbon markets. In this system, credits are awarded to projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They may then be bought by polluting companies or governments to offset their own emissions. LifeStraw Family users no longer have to boil their water to make it safe to drink. Less boiling means fewer emissions.”

Folding Saris to Filter Cholera-Contaminated Water : Rural Bangladeshi women often use pieces of saris, the traditional dress, to filter sweetened drinks to get rid of leaves, insects and other visible debris. About 10 years ago, researchers in Maryland and Bangladesh, looking for ways to reduce the prevalence of waterborne diseases in local communities, came up with a ridiculously simple solution: Wash and fold the sari. Bangladeshi women in 27 villages were trained to cover water-collecting urns with a laundered sari folded four times before scooping up river water. The cotton fibers strain out 99% of cholera bacilli. “Over the next 18 months the rate of cholera in these villages dropped by about 50 percent, compared with other villages — about the same effect as that achieved by a much more expensive nylon water filter.”

The PeePoo, a Biodegradable Toilet for the Developing World:  Forty percent of the world’s population (2.6 billion people) does not have access to a toilet. To address this problem, a  Swedish architect and professor named Anders Wilhelmson has invented a biodegradable toilet called a PeePoo which resembles a plastic bag. “After it is used, the bag is knotted and then buried or sold back to the manufacturer. A lining of urea crystals in the bag helps transform the waste into fertilizer…Currently, about 6,000 PeePoo bags are produced every day and distributed in slums in Nairobi, Kenya…Mr. Wilhelmson’s company buys back the used bags for a third of the original price, and the waste is turned into fertilizer.”

How will the 1.1 billion people living in India today cope with climate change? As resources dwindle and weather patterns become more erratic, the country’s rural majority will dive deeper into poverty due to global climate disruption if action is not taken to alleviate the risk. Through rain water harvesting and accessible career training, local forward-thinking institutions are transforming communities to be better prepared for environmental hardships ahead.

A reporter from National Geographic wrote this article about one community that, after decades of suffering from the chokehold of poverty, has become an “incredible example of how rainwater harvesting can create prosperity.” Government environmental regeneration programs have helped villagers install rainwater storage systems,  and this investment in sustainable development is proving highly effective.

"Kamla Devi was Rajasthan's first woman to graduate from Barefoot college as a solar engineer." Photo credit: The Guardian

Elsewhere in India, Barefoot College is training rural women to become green entrepreneurs in an effort to help the country grow in a way that is environmentally responsible. Barefoot College’s low cost, decentralized and community driven approach capitalizes on the potential already present in villages by training the women in skills including solar engineering, healthcare and water testing. Check out this article about one of the College’s success stories,  a 19-year-old, semi-literate woman from a small village who “has broken through India’s rigid caste system to become the country’s first Dalit [“untouchable”] solar engineer.”

Remember this movie? Fifteen years ago, when Waterworld first came out, the concept of melting icecaps and land being swallowed by water seemed laughable to some of us. It is still a wild overstatement to say that we’re going to need the survival skills of Kevin Costner to adjust to climate change, but the BBC recently reported that one piece of land has in fact vanished thanks to rising sea levels. An island in the Bay of Bengal near India and Bangladesh, once a point of contention between the two states, has now come under water. New Moore Island to Indians and South Talpatti to the Bangladeshis, just six feet high and uninhabited, was significant to these nations because of the oil or natural gas that might lie beneath it. Now global climate change has solved the territorial dispute for good.

This incident’s importance should not be underestimated. Bangladesh certainly has cause for concern, considering the fact that-according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change- 17% of the nation will vanish under water by 2050 and 20 million people will be displaced. If scientists’ claim that unhealthy amounts of carbon emissions cause sea levels to rise is true, then this island’s disappearance should be an alarming wake up call.

It’s a simple idea. Save water, use it later. People around the world have been harvesting rainwater for thousands of years, but the concept is now experiencing a revival in light of water scarcity problems that are caused by global climate disruption.

How it works: While there are many ways to harvest rainwater, it is usually done in one of two ways: the water is collected either from roofs or saved in underground cisterns. Roof catchment systems move the water into a storage container (sometimes underground), like a rain barrel, through pipes or gutters. To see it for yourself, click this link for pictures of the various types of rainwater harvesting systems available. The collected water can then be used for watering lawns, washing cars, flushing the toilet or whatever else you can think of.

A model of an underground rainwater storage system

In India, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have taken an active role in generating the capital needed to build catchment systems. Groups like Jal Swaraj create rain centers that provide information, resources, and training for locals. In turn, these locals present their wealth of traditional wisdom about how best to interact with nature. The NGOs give money or building materials thereby enabling residents to put their knowledge to work and appeasing the water crisis in their area.

Rainwater harvesting is gaining momentum in the U.S as well. Because there are so many rainwater harvesting companies in America nowadays, it is becoming easier and cheaper to buy and/or install rainwater collection devices in your own home. Here are just a few companies to choose from:

RainHarvest

Rain Harvesting

American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association

Water Tanks

It’s really exciting that investing in technology that helps the environment by reusing natural resources is catching on. In Malaysia, the Environment Ministry is encouraging developers to make rainwater collection systems a selling point for house buyers and to stress the point that while these systems might be expensive today, they will save a lot of money tomorrow. Hospitals are in on it, homeowners are in on it, even hospitals and baseball teams (which I will write about later on because that’s an interesting story in and of itself). The revival of rainwater harvesting is essential in times of environmental uncertainty and I can only hope that more people will save and reuse resources in this way.

Here’s a compilation of the latest news stories regarding water in the world today. There’s a wide variety here so that you’ll get a broad view of what’s going on with water.

25 years after a chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, people are still dying from contaminated ground water and rates of birth defects continue to rise

Water on the moon? This could mean big things for the future.

Sculptor Ellen Driscoll combs the streets of Brooklyn for plastic water bottles that she uses by the hundreds to create unbelievably elaborate pieces of art.

A new study shows that sea levels will rise more than 4 feet, twice what scientists had previously predicted, by 2100.

An audio slideshow of China’s current desertification crisis. Beautiful photographs and an introduction to a very important, yet under-reported, issue.

Treehugger.com reports on how unsafe drinking water effects children’s health. I like this one because it gives the basic facts about this topic without overloading the reader.

And here are some miscellaneous sites you might like to check out:

www.charitywater.com All donations given to this organization help fund projects that give poor people around the world access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

http://waterwars.pulitzergateway.org/ This site introduces current major water issues and provides forums for people who have questions or comments about the articles.