March 22nd means it’s World Water Day again! Established by the U.N., World Water Day has been observed annually since 1993 as a way to raise awareness around protecting the world’s water resources.
According to WorldWaterDay.org, 27 percent of the urban population in the developing world doesn’t have access to piped water at home, and poor people in developing countries pay exponentially more for their water than people in North America.
But water shortages aren’t restricted to any one country or continent. As climate change continues to exacerbate environments around the world, recent droughts seen everywhere from the Amazon to the U.S. may become more frequent and more intense. If you haven’t started making every effort to conserve water, this World Water Day is the best time to start.
Here are some easy tips to start saving water at home, which will likewise lower your water bill. Submit your own tips to conserve water below, or tweet your idea with the hashtag #SaveWater and we’ll add it to the slideshow.
CLICK HERE to see how you can get involved with organizations that are helping to provide clean drinking water to those in need around the world.
Sure, it can get a little discouraging, hearing about all the ways in which humans are harming wildlife. And, sometimes we can feel like part of the problem, rather than the solution. However, each of us can play a role in helping wildlife. Below are our Top 10 ideas—almost everyone can do one or more of them—to help make the world a friendlier place for wild creatures. (more…)
Switching to compact fluorescent bulbs saves energy and money.
Taking better care of the environment may not have been on your list of resolutions for 2011, but when you see images of smog-filled cities or hear about devastated natural landscapes, you have to wonder about the type of world that will be left for future generations.
Move towards a greener lifestyle with these simple steps:
At home
• Replace bulbs with compact fluorescent or solar powered lights. (more…)
Kiyotaka Akasaka is the UN's Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information
By Kiyotaka Akasaka
2010 was supposed to be the year that the world reversed the loss of biodiversity. Countries have failed to reach this target, however, and species are becoming extinct at far more than 100 times the natural rate. Worse, it has seemed like the political will to change course simply was not there to do anything about it.
Then came the Nagoya Biodiversity Conference, and the negotiations looked like they could get bogged down in a bottomless web of national interests that would have made agreement on a way forward impossible. The talks were tough and ran late, but in the end, countries agreed not only to a new plan of action with new targets, but also on a new and historic protocol that helps to fairly share the benefits of genetic resources. The Nagoya agreement shows that multilateralism is alive and well. (more…)
Rhino poaching in southern Africa has escalated to horrific levels. The 2010 death toll is higher than the three previous years combined, with 20 rhinos being poached every month. Earth-Touch has put together a short video that highlights this shocking reality. We need to raise awareness and gather funds to strengthen anti-poaching units. If you would like to get involved, visit Stop Rhino Poaching and join the community, or CLICK HERE to join our campaign.
At COP 10, Leaders Must Link Human Security to Environmental Security
The challenge is immense. The situation is critical. One hundred and ninety-three national delegations are in Nagoya, Japan, attending the Tenth Meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP-10). This will be the international community’s last, best chance to halt the march to extinction of many species. Every year, between 1,500 and 15,000 species disappear forever. This is one of the worst mass extinctions our planet has ever endured and is due primarily to human activity.
In the early 1990s, the international community came together with much fanfare and signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The CBD was designed to preserve 10% of the world’s ecological regions by 2010. Sadly, no country is anywhere close to meeting this target. Human activity continues to destroy habitats, which has resulted in a massive decline in biodiversity. Twenty-five per cent of the world’s mammal species, 20 per cent of the world’s birds, and 40 per cent of the world’s amphibians are threatened with extinction. Ninety percent of the world’s commercial fish species are over-exploited or have crashed. (more…)
World leaders in Nagoya must link conservation and development, says Dr. Keith Martin, MP
OTTAWA- “The failure to implement initiatives that link human security and environmental security is seriously contributing to the catastrophic and accelerating loss of biodiversity around the world,” said Dr. Keith Martin, founder and chair of the Canadian Parliament’s first All-Party International Conservation Caucus. Dr. Martin is urging world leaders who are meeting in Nagoya, Japan for the 10th meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity to link development programs with habitat protection.
“Ecosystems have the best chance of surviving and being protected when people derive a benefit from them. They survive and thrive when they are more valuable to people in their natural state than if they are destroyed,” said Dr. Martin, who has personally witnessed projects in South Africa, Botswana, and Tanzania that have successfully used this approach to save fragile ecosystems. (more…)
Each and every one of us is, on average, about 60 percent water. Water is deeply embedded not just in us, but in the global economy, too. And water is the lifeblood of the planet – pulsing through rivers, resting in lakes and trickling through underground aquifers (groundwater sources). Along the way, the flow of fresh water supports remarkable, but increasingly threatened, species and ecosystems. (more…)
There are as few as 3,200 tigers left in the wild. Scientists say the situation is so bad that, unless we act urgently, tigers will be extinct in the wild by the time of the next Chinese Year of the Tiger in 2022. That means that, without urgent action, tigers will be gone from the earth in 12 years.
The good news is that it is not too late to prevent this. (more…)
It has been 50 years since Dr. Jane Goodall, world-famous primatologist and UN Messenger for Peace, first set foot on the shores of Lake Tanganyika to begin the ground-breaking study that introduced us to our closest animal relatives. Since then, the chimpanzee research she pioneered at Gombe has produced a wealth of scientific discovery, and her vision has expanded into a global mission to empower people to make a difference for all living things.
Visit www.janegoodall.ca to learn how the Institute is helping to deliver that global mission and how her work with chimpanzees is helping to redefine our place in the natural world.
March 22nd means it’s World Water Day again! Established by the U.N., World Water Day has been observed annually since 1993 as a way to raise awareness around protecting the world’s water resources.
