Water World — A Planet in Crisis?
Interview by Austin Gelder | World Ark Associate Editor
Water crisis? What water crisis? That’s the reaction renowned photographer Rick Smolan got when he and his partner Jennifer Erwitt set out to capture images and stories of the Earth running dry for Blue Planet Run: The Race to Provide Safe Drinking Water to the World. The beautiful, oversized book brims with poignant images that capture widespread water-related problems including illness, pollution and drought. The book also chronicles the around-the-world relay of 20 runners dedicated to raising money and awareness about this increasingly alarming problem. All proceeds from book sales will fund safe-drinking water projects.
WA: Why aren’t more of us aware of the water crisis?
 RICK SMOLAN: It doesn’t seem to get much press. There’s this sense that it’s only a problem for those poor people “over there.” We’re trying to bring the story home by telling people it’s a problem for every human being. It’s shocking when we find out it’s a problem here in our backyard.
The fact is, there’s the same amount of water on the Earth today than there was when the dinosaurs were here. Of that, only 3 percent isn’t salt water, and only 1 percent isn’t locked in glaciers. That’s not very much.
The chapter [of Blue Planet Run] I’m fondest of is “We’re All Downstream,” because there’s always been a sense that we can just dump it in a river and it will be somebody else’s problem, or that nature will take care of it. We all think, “How can we puny humans ruin something as big as the ocean?” There are all these myths that we can’t really screw up the world’s water supply, but if we do then nature or some clever scientist will come to the rescue. That’s not really true anymore.
But the truth is this problem is going to come back and bite us if we don’t start addressing it right now. A lot of people believe that if civilization starts paying attention to the global water crisis right now and not 20 years from now, we can solve it. Still, it’s really hard to get people to pay any attention.
What is the main message you’re trying to get across?
The goal of the book is to say, this is a huge problem that everyone on the planet needs to deal with. The governor of Georgia declared an emergency last summer and said the state had only 40 days of water left. That’s pretty dramatic. We have a sinking water table everywhere. We are now, today, pulling water out of the ground four times faster than it’s going back into the ground.
The good news is that as you go through the book you see lots of interesting solutions and technologies. My own assumption before I did this book was that they would figure out desalination and we could just make fresh water from the ocean. There are plants that do that, so what’s the big deal? But it turns out that if you desalinate more than 7 percent of the ocean, the rest of it will die because you’d be changing the delicate balance of salinity and acidity.
Why is now the right time for this book?
We looked at what Al Gore accomplished with An Inconvenient Truth. We thought bringing this issue to people’s attention now made sense because they seem to be sensitized and open to hearing about these things instead of turning away. I was very fortunate that I found the Blue Planet Run Foundation (www.blueplanetrun.org) to fund the coverage.
How much money are you hoping to raise? Where will it go?
We don’t know how much we’ll raise, but every single penny of royalties will go to water projects around the world. The foundation that sponsored this book is not taking anything. And the printers are planting two trees for every tree used to produce the book.
I really like the little cards attached in the back of the book that can be torn out and given to people to let them know donations have been made in their names. When people read books like this, a lot of times they ask, “What can I do?” Maybe some of them will think that instead of giving DVDs for Christmas they can give a gift of a donation toward clean water.
What will happen if we ignore the problem and maintain the status quo?
One of the chapters in the book talks about how future conflicts will be fought over water, not oil. That’s already happening where water crosses borders between states and countries. The Israelis and Palestinians are already fighting over water. There’s a map included in the book that shows all the different areas where this conflict is playing out. It’s pretty obvious we can’t keep going like this.
The good news is we’re not so far gone there’s nothing we can do about it. If we act now, we can do something. This book outlines the substantial problems we face, but it’s also supposed to be positive and hopeful. How is that?
We asked people to tell us both the bad stuff and the good stuff. We wanted to know about interesting, clever solutions. Wrapping the Alps with blankets [to prevent melting] to me sounds pretty wacky. The fact that people are trying things like this is interesting. There are farmers in India who are using popsicle wrappers to rig drip–irrigation systems. There are the PlayPumps that draw well water by harnessing the power of children on the playground.
It’s low-tech, it’s high-tech, it’s human ingenuity being brought to problems we’ve caused. Hopefully there’s enough time to fix it.
What’s next?
I’m hoping some of the people in the book can get more support for their efforts because of the visibility we’re bringing their projects. We’re also working on a version of this book geared toward school-age children to educate them about water issues.
We also want to get more publicity for the water issue. When humanity starts focusing on something, it’s amazing how often we come up with good solutions. We just have to get their attention.
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