10.29.2007 - 08:00am ET

Water scarcity in this Mexican community, Circle of Blue finds, is triggering economic hardship and immigration to the U.S.

(CSRwire) TRAVERSE CITY, MI - October 29, 2007 - 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.

"Water is the axis issue that intersects the world's greatest challenges, from health, poverty and security to climate, immigration and environment, even financial and commodities markets," said J. Carl Ganter, director of Circle of Blue, the journalism, research and collaborative project covering water issues worldwide. "We're just beginning to grasp the stresses on our world's water supplies. Our imperative as journalists, scientists and communicators is to gather comprehensive information from the front lines of this complicated issue - to understand where we are, where we're headed and what we need to do."

Circle of Blue today issued a call for public involvement in identifying assignment locations for its expanded coverage around the world, and an invitation for people to submit their own reports. Participate online at: www.circleofblue.org/bucket

As the crisis unfolds, top priorities include measuring its consequences, finding cost-effective solutions, and engaging the public with relevant, compelling and in-depth stories that lead to awareness and informed decisions.

Circle of Blue plans to report 150 multi-media stories of the crisis covering the challenges and solutions using world-recognized talents, and presenting the results online in new interactive ways with actionable data from diverse sources. Its Ford Foundation-funded pilot project in Tehuacan, Mexico, revealed severe drought and declining aquifers as a cause of illegal immigration to the U.S.

The complex saga of increasing demand, declining supplies, and human mismanagement is disrupting the economies, cultures, and well-being of billions of people around the world. In the U.S., water shortages in diverse regions are not entirely acts of nature, according to researchers. Many are solvable and reflect the consequences of aging or inadequate infrastructure, demand that defies nature's ability to keep pace and a lack of understanding the impacts of climate change.

"If our municipal water supplies shut off, we couldn't survive on the local water resources that we have," said Dr. Peter H. Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, the Oakland, Calif.-based water policy think tank. "They depend on our bringing water enormous distances and treating that water to a very high standard so that we can use it. And if that water stopped, we'd have to rethink our whole civilization."

While the American Southeast is gripped by the most severe drought in 100 years, even legendary water-rich areas such as the Great Lakes are struggling to cope with foreboding stresses on their water ecosystems. Analysts say more than $26 billion are needed to clean up and protect the Great Lakes water supply.

Globally, the UN estimates that two-thirds of the world's population will live in areas of water stress within the next 20 years, and that 5 million people die each year due to contaminated drinking water.

"We have a very short period of time here to get people educated on what this means," the head of the Western Water Assessment in Boulder Colo., Bradley Udall, told the New York Times Sunday Magazine last week of the drought in the American West.

Share your water story

Circle of Blue invites you to share your stories and thoughts about water, whether from the suburbs of Atlanta, the deserts of Mongolia or the edges of sub-Saharan Africa.

Toll-free: 1-866-722-3600
email: bucket1@circleofblue.org
Web: http://www.circleofblue.org/bucket
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/circleofblue

Send us your assignment ideas

Where should we send our teams to document the front lines of this crisis? Who are its heroes? What are the solutions? http://www.circleofblue.org/suggest

About

Pacific Institute

The Pacific Institute is dedicated to protecting our natural world, encouraging sustainable development, and improving global security. Based in Oakland, California, the Institute uses interdisciplinary analysis in order to develop real-world solutions to problems like water shortages, habitat destruction, global warming, and environmental injustice. Founded in 1982, the Institute celebrates its 20th Anniversary in 2007.

Circle of Blue

Founded by leading journalists and scientists and based on the shores of the Great Lakes, Circle of Blue pioneers communications and information technology, informing decision making with original front-line reporting, dynamic data spaces and engaging social media. Circle of Blue is a nonprofit independent journalism project of the Pacific Institute. It was featured recently at the Aspen Ideas Festival and the Clinton Global Initiative, and received initial development funding from the Catto Charitable Foundation, The Coca-Cola Company, Ford Foundation, Herrington-Fitch Foundation, Linden Trust for Conservation and the SymbioCycles Foundation.

Partners

Circle of Blue partners announced at the Clinton Global Initiative include the international photojournalism agency Contact Press Images; the Environmental Change and Security Program and China Environment Forum at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; exhibit firm Evergreen Exhibitions; acclaimed artist Greg Mort; SustainAbility, the global independent consultancy for corporate responsibility and sustainability; and Sea Studios Foundation, producer of the PBS series, "Strange Days on Planet Earth." Also included are Getty Images and Magnum Photos Foundation.

Circle of Blue is made possible by the generous financial support of individuals, foundations and companies - please join us. info (at) circleofblue.org

Contact

J. Carl Ganter, director
Circle of Blue
media@circleofblue.org
+1.202.351-6870 x110
www.circleofblue.org

Ian Hart, communications director
Pacific Institute
ihart@pacinst.org
+1.510.251-1600 x106
www.pacinst.org, www.worldwater.org
(statistics, water issues, policy)

Available media
B-Roll, high-resolution photographs, audio and video interviews http://www.circleofblue.org/media_center
Contact:
Eric Daigh
eric (at) circleofblue.org
+1.202.351-6870 x115

Comments
(online video)

"Circle of Blue is creating, building, establishing the information, cultural, research, fact-based comfort zone to inform these collaborative conversations. And it's doing so through its journalism, and it's doing so through its research/outreach. And third, it's going to help build these conversations through its social media. It is a communications, social organizing research project of its time. It's as timely today, it's as much a part of its realm today as the printing press was in the 1600s."
Keith Schneider
Senior Editor & Strategist, Circle of Blue

"We've seen throughout history that exceptional narrative journalistic storytelling can engage large audiences on multiple levels. The need for front-line reporting and data collection on the freshwater crisis has never been greater. The ability to disseminate information widely has never been more keen. It's a rare point in history when we can reach out to large audiences with relevant, actionable information and when a global audience - from school children to scientists - can participate."
J. Carl Ganter
Director, Circle of Blue

"I could take you back to the Civil War. You name the time and I'll name you the image that changed the policy. And it is true throughout all generations. Because it's the image that resides in your brain and doesn't leave. It stays there with you and you don't forget it."
Karen Mullarkey
Director of Visuals, Circle of Blue
former Director of Photography, Newsweek and Rolling Stone

"If there's a next commodity war in America, it'll be over water, fresh water. So there are these kinds of issues that we have to bring to the fore of the narratives in America."
Kenny Irby
Visual Team Leader and Diversity Program Chair
Poynter Insitute for Media Studies

"What Circle of Blue can do is connect the professional journalists, the citizens, the NGOs, and government leaders and those in industry and other forms of science who would be connected to the issue of water, in ways in which we can learn from each other."
Bob Steele
Nelson Poynter Scholar for Journalism Values
Senior Faculty, Ethics
Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

"From a journalistic standpoint, or certainly a reader's standpoint, feedback, especially on a subject that looks at water shortage, planetwide...You're going to find that there are people responding who are a lot smarter than you and who may have wonderful ideas and also may find kindred spirits. They establish a dialog between other viewers. So it's 'one to one,' if you will, the blog commenter to the producer. But it's also the 'one to all' by version of the web."
Chip Scanlan
Senior Faculty, Reporting, Writing & Editing
Director, National Writers Workshop
Poynter Institute for Media Studies

"I'm really intrigued by Circle of Blue and how it provides an opportunity to give kids the freedom to see where they fit in that circle, and then how they develop a solution to a problem that will be their circle for life."
Rich Odell
Circle of Blue advisory board
"The insight of Circle of Blue is finding ways that these messages can be translated and brought to diverse audiences in formats that work for them. And so it is having a totally open mind about which media format or written format or photo format or video format is the way it will reach these audiences. And so it's taking the mountain to Mohammed rather than just assuming they're going to pick up some big book and figure it out on their own. They're not. We have to take it to them in different formats, in appealing formats that can be enjoyable as well as educational. To do that takes a big, diverse team of expertise and that's what Circle of Blue is putting together."
Dr. Geoff Dabelko
Director, Environmental Change and Security Project
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

"I think that water pollution could very well be the catalyst that will enable people to push for greater change in the political system, for getting a cleaner environment...When the water's gone, life's gone."
Dr. Jennifer Turner
Director, China Environment Forum
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

"Reaching an audience today means reaching an audience that is participatory. An audience that will be in the mix with us as journalists. And learning to work with that is really a key element."
Keith Jenkins
Washington Post

"You collect data from multiple places and you draw conclusions from that data, but ultimately what's going to happen is that that data is going to push you to ask another set of questions that will then lead you to collecting more data. So there's a circle of data, questions and answers and solutions and their impact, that the metaphor of a circle is actually very appropriate." 
Dr. Alon Halevy
Scientist, Google

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Links and Resources

Pacific Institute - The World's Water
http://www.worldwater.org

Pacific Institute - At the Crest of a Wave: A Proactive Approach to Corporate Water Strategy
 Pacific Institute: A Proactive Approache to Corporate Water Strategy

Clinton Global Initiative
http://www.clintonglobalinitiative.org

National Assessment of the Impacts of Climate Variability and Change
http://www.pacinst.org/reports/national_assessment

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Environmental Change and Security Program, "Navigating Peace"
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/water

Navigating Peace multimedia "Water Stories"
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/waterstories

China Environment Forum - Circle of Blue
 Developing water stories in China: "Driving into the Ocean of Sand"

Great Lakes at risk
 Great Lakes shrinking?

New York Times Sunday Magazine
The Perfect Drought

For Journalists covering water

The Poynter Institute - News University, "Covering Water Quality"
Covering Water Quality

Society of Environmental Journalists - Resources
 SEJ Resources

U.S. Drought Monitor
 U.S. Drought Monitor

For more information please contact: