La Comunidad DBA Verde comparte gustosamente el libro Blu Planet Run, un trabajo creado por Rick Smolan y Jennifer Erwitt, donde Robert Redford nos introduce a un exquisito material que recopila imágenes y texto en pro de la carrera para proporcionar agua potable para el mundo.

1. Smolan
&
US Price $45.00
Erwitt ENVIRONMENT/PHOTOGRAPHY
continued From Front flap S THE ARAL SEA, once a glistening body of water, has lost two-thirds
of its volume because its source rivers were diverted for cotton irrigation
S TAEKO TERAUCHI-LOUTITT runs along the Donau River in Vienna,
Austria on June 18, 2007. Born in Tochigi, Japan, Taeko started running 16
during the Soviet era. Previously the fourth-largest lake in the world – the years ago. Her selfless decision to run around the world had an unexpected
size of Southern California – much of it is now a dry graveyard of rusting personal benefit when she fell in love with fellow runner Canadian Jason
shipwrecks. This desertification has produced toxic dust, resulting in Louttit during the three month relay race. Chris Emerick
Michael Malone, Bill McKibben Jeffrey Rothfeder,
respiratory diseases and cancers in communities downwind of the lake.
Gerd Ludwig IN REGION AFTER REGION AROUND THE GLOBE, water — or put another way, control over
rapidly diminishing supplies of clean water — is at the heart of many of the world’s most
Jin Zidell asked if we could meet because he wanted to do something to make a raw geopolitical disputes, some of which have already rippled into dangerously destabilizing
difference in a world that appeared to be spinning out of control. Like Ashok, Jin had conflicts.
Michael Specter, Paul Hawken and Mike Cerre.
lost a loved one, his wife, and had spent a long and profound period in mourning. To Not surprisingly, among the hottest flashpoints is the Middle East, where water is at a
those of us who were his friends, his heartache seemed bottomless and immeasurable. premium and disagreements are in abundance. Virtually every political, social and military
But on that day we met for lunch, Jin seemed different. He wanted to do something strategy undertaken by Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and other nations in the area is
to honor Linda. What struck me as we spoke was the scope of Jin’s dreams. His eyes driven by its impact on access to water. Consider the Golan Heights, captured by Israel during
were as big as his love for Linda. His grief had become resolve. the Six-Day War in 1967. Formerly southwest Syria, this rugged plateau is home to headwaters
BLUE PLANET RUN
When Jin asked me to suggest a way he could make a real difference I suggested that of the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee, two of Israel’s most essential sources of water.
he do something that was measurable, something that could change an individual’s life Despite Syria’s saber rattling and widespread international condemnation for its occupation
In keeping with the theme of the book, two trees
in a single day, that he focus on a global problem that could be solved in a decade, of this territory, Israel refuses to retreat from the Golan Heights because it fears that Syria
an endeavor that could actually push the needle with respect to improving peoples’ would divert the water supply, as had been threatened in the early 1960s.
lives and the environment. He looked at me puzzled and asked, what would that be? Similarly, the 2006 Lebanon-Israeli war was fought primarily in southern
I knew of only one thing: water. Ninety minutes later, he left determined to find a way Lebanon, where tributaries of the Jordan River lie. Hezbollah
to provide safe drinking water to 200 million people for the rest of their lives by 2027. has vowed to control the water resources for Lebanon, even if
will be planted for each tree used in the production
Since that day, Jin has never looked back. Israel has to do with less.
Five years later the Blue Planet Run Foundation has three major initiatives under way. Meanwhile, in a mirror image of these disputes, the Palestinian rejection of peace accords in
The first is the Peer Water Exchange, which aims to enjoin thousands of the late 1990s grew in large part out of concern that these pacts ensured that Israel could
non-governmental organizations to find, fund and share the best water projects around determine how much water Palestinian areas receive. The Palestinians claim that Israel has
of this book and 100% of all royalties will fund safe
the world. The second is the extraordinary photography book you are holding in capped their per capita water consumption at about 18 gallons of water per day, compared to
your hands, designed to bring home Jin’s belief that that pure water is a right, not a about 92 gallons for the typical Israeli.
commodity. It’s no wonder that soon after signing peace treaties with Israel, the late King Hussein of Jordan
The third initiative of the Blue Planet Run Foundation is the circumnavigation of the and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt pointedly noted that only a quarrel over water could bring
drinking water projects. For more information on
globe by runners, symbolizing a circle in our hearts and minds, a closing of the loop them back to war with Israel.
50 percent
of love, care and responsibility that people share for each other. From June 1 through In large or small ways, similar brinksmanship occurs with disturbing regularity in regions already
September 4, 2007, a team of 22 dedicated runners set aside their own lives for 95 tense with enmity that has evolved over generations:
days to carry a message to the entire planet that undrinkable water is unthinkable in
S In Southern Africa, the waters of the Okavango River basin are pulled in four directions
today’s world. If the Blue Planet Run Foundation can change the world to ensure that
how you can help, visit www.BluePlanetRun.org
by Angola, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe, with hardly a cordial word spoken;
no child will ever be harmed by the water he or she drinks, then it will be one of the
The number of people who don’t have great miracles of the 21st century. And Jin’s dedication to the memory of the person he S In the Indian-controlled territories of Kashmir, where headwaters of the Indus River
access to the quality of water available loved most will have changed the world. basin reside, Pakistan has threatened to use nuclear weapons against India if any of its
to the citizens of Rome 2,000 years ago — PAUL HAWKEN
water supply is interrupted;
S AN ARMED GUIDE walks on a cliff above the Nile River near Amarna, Egypt. The Nile flows
through 10 countries in eastern Africa, but by force of a nearly 80-year-old treaty, Egypt commands
most of its waters, a source of dispute and strained relations for decades. Upstream countries, such as
Ethiopia and Sudan, have proposed dams on the river to aid their own development. But these plans
have been condemned by Egypt as it anticipates its population doubling over the next 50 years.
Kenneth Garrett, National Geographic, Getty Images
134 Blue Planet Run
S In Sri Lanka, violent conflicts have broken out between government armies and a rebel
group, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who closed a provincial sluice gate in protest
over government delays in improving the nation’s water system;
S In Kenya, dozens were killed and thousands fled their homes when youths from the
1.1 billion
The number of people worldwide
Maasai and Kikuyu tribal communities fought with machetes, spears, bows and arrows
and clubs over water in the Rift Valley. — 1 in every 6 — without access
to clean water
The behavior is irrational, yet the motivation has an undeniable logic. Decades of poorly
designed irrigation techniques, the construction of massive dams, toxic dumping, wetlands and
forest destruction, industrial pollution, residential sprawl, lack of conservation and misuse have
taken a dire toll on global water resources, and clean fresh water is becoming scarcer in every
corner of the planet. The worst conditions are in places like Haiti, Gambia, Cambodia and
Mali, where residents subsist on an average of less than 2 gallons of water per day — fewer
than three large bottles of bottled water and well below the 13 gallons per day considered
the amount of water needed to meet a minimum quality of life. With less and less water to go
around, the idea that people would begin to fight over what’s left — and over who determines
who gets what remains — is anything but outlandish.
And while richer countries like the United States have been hiding water shortages with
engineering sleights of hand, this strategy is now backfiring. Southeast Florida, southern
California, Atlanta and parts of Texas are all likely to be dry within 20 years if their growth
patterns and management of water aren’t sharply altered.
In the United States, the water wars are more often waged in court. For example, after
30 years and no end to the amount of money being spent on attorney fees, three states in
the southeast are still feuding over the Chattahoochee River. Rising north of Atlanta, the
Chattahoochee is the sole water supply for the sprawling city’s metropolitan area as well as a
source of downstream water for two neighbor states, Alabama and Florida. Providing water
for Atlanta’s uncontrolled population boom — the city has grown from 2.2 million people in
1980 to 3.7 million people in 2000 — severely taxes the Chattahoochee. The city’s largest
treatment plant tapped 3.8 billion gallons a year of the river’s water when it opened in 1991;
now it pumps nearly 20 billion gallons annually. If, as expected, Atlanta’s population reaches 5
million by 2025, the Chattahoochee won’t be able to handle the load.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
But that isn’t slowing Atlanta down. Instead, the city is aggressively making plans to squeeze
more water out of the Chattahoochee by building a dozen additional dams and reservoirs on KIBBUTZ HATZERIM gained a territorial foothold in Israel’s Negev Desert
and kicked off a global revolution in agriculture when it partnered with water S WITH A POPULATION of 18 million growing by almost 400,000 every year, the water needs of
the river. This, in turn, has raised the ire of Alabama and Florida, which claim that Georgia is
engineer Simcha Blass in 1965 to develop and mass-produce drip irrigation. the residents of Mumbai, India, are staggering. Because water is prohibitively expensive, many slum
stealing the river for itself. Farmers in southern Georgia are siding with Alabama and Florida Netafim, the kibbutz’s irrigation business, now controls a large portion of the dwellers rely on leaks found — or created — in the massive pipelines that carry water to more affluent
drip market, with $400 million in sales last year. Manager Naty Barak checks neighborhoods. Mumbai’s have-nots avoid the garbage and human waste surrounding their dwellings by
against Atlanta, as their irrigation allotment falls. Depending on the outcome of the many
the kibbutz drip lines, which feed corn, cotton and tomato crops in an area that walking on top of the pipelines. Around the world, losses of fresh water due to leakage are routinely
Rick Smolan is a former Time, Life and National
receives less than 8 inches of rain annually. Alexandra Boulat reported as high as 70 percent in some major cities. Christopher Brown, Redux
Geographic photographer best known as the
THE RACE TO PROVIDE SAFE DRINKING WATER TO THE WORLD
creator of the Day in the Life book series. He and
his partner, Jennifer Erwitt, are the principals of
Against All Odds Productions, based in Sausalito,
Blue Planet Run provides readers with an
It is estimated that one billion people across the
California. Fortune Magazine featured Against 5.3 billion extraordinary look at the water problems
The number of people — two-thirds
of the world’s population — who will planet now lack access to clean water. But, as
All Odds as “One of the 25 Coolest Companies
suffer from water shortages by 2025
facing humanity and some of the hopeful the extraordinary images on the following pages
in America.” Their global photography projects solutions being pursued by large and small show, there are solutions to the world’s fresh
combine creative storytelling with state-of-the-art
companies, by entrepreneurs and activists, We call our planet Earth, but its surface is mainly water. We
should call it Ocean. In the hollows of space, Earth abides as a
water crisis, and they are within reach. This book,
technology. Many of their books have appeared
sparkling oasis, afloat with jumbo islands, and always half
ostensibly about a world crisis, is also a work of
hidden beneath a menagerie of clouds.
and by nongovernmental organizations and
In my upstate New York town, seven waterfalls tumble and spume
in lofty dialects of water. Liquid scarves loop through glacier-carved gorges, and winter reminds
on the New York Times best-seller lists and have
us that light, airy bits of water can hurdle fences, collapse buildings and bring a burly city to its
optimism and hope.
knees. In winter, ice forms a cataract on the eye of Lake Cayuga, but the lake never freezes
solid. It can’t.
foundations. By the end of the book, readers
Luckily for us. Eccentric right down to our atoms, we’d be impossible without water’s weird
been featured on the covers of Time, Newsweek
bag of tricks. The litany of we’re-only-here-because begins with this chilling one: We’re only
here because ice floats. Other liquids contract and sink when they freeze, but water alone
expands, in the process growing minute triangular pyramids that clump to form spacious, holey
designs that float free. If ice didn’t rise, the oceans would have frozen solid long ago, along with
are left to form their own conclusions as to The Blue Planet Run volume you are holding
all the wells, springs and rivers. Without this presto-chango of water, an element that one
and Fortune. Their books include America 24/7,
moment slips like silk through the hands and the next collapses rooftops and chisels gorges,
Earth would be barren.
S SLUM DWELLERS scramble for water in Jai Hind Camp in the heart of Since life bloomed in the seas, we need perpetual sips of fresh water to thrive. Become
dehydrated, as I once did in Florida, and the brain’s salt flats dry out, mental life dulls, and only
in your hands represents two extraordinary
Delhi, India. The camp is home to more than 4,000 migrant workers who are
One Digital Day, 24 Hours in Cyberspace, Passage to
dependent on daily deliveries from public and private water trucks. Ironically, S THERE IS NO MORE or no less water available for human use now than there
whether or how the human race is capable of
electrolytes dripped into a vein keep death at bay. We are walking lagoons who quaff water
the middle class in India, which receives water via home faucets, pays a tenth was at the dawn of humankind. But some areas of the planet have always had
of what the poor pay for their water delivered by truck. India has nearly 17 more than others. In Canada, where karst limestone cliffs line Death Lake in the
percent of the world’s population but only about 4 percent of its freshwater Northwest Territories, a twentieth of the world’s population enjoys almost a tenth
resources. Stuart Freedman of the world’s fresh surface water. Raymond Gehman, Getty Images
Drinking Dinosaur Water 27
Vietnam, The Power to Heal and From Alice to Ocean. projects. The first is the result of a worldwide
taking the steps necessary to solve this global search for images and stories to capture the
They live with their two children, Phoebe and
Jesse, in Northern California. crisis before it is too late. human face of the global water crisis. For one
month, 40 talented photojournalists crossed
ARMED MEMBERS of the rebel group MEND (Movement for
Emancipation of the Niger Delta) have destroyed oil facilities and forced the
closure of a significant percentage of the area’s oil operations. They have
turned to violence to protest the pollution of their country’s waterways
Blue Planet Run is two books in one: First, it It will cost up to $1 trillion in the next 30 years to clean up contaminated groundwater at some 300,000 sites in the United States. The world’s major cities could save more than 40 percent of their annual water supplies by fixing leaks in water mains and pipes.
the globe taking photographs to show the
is about an extraordinary 15,000-mile relay
and alleged degradation of the natural environment by foreign multinational
corporations. On May 1, 2007 MEND caused Chevron to shut down
extent of the problem. At the same time, a team
some oil production when it reportedly attacked the company’s Oloibiri FOUL SMELLING WATER mixed with coal had been running from Kenny Stroud’s faucet for
floating production, storage and offloading vessel off southern Bayelsa state. more than a decade before clean tap water was finally provided by the city of Rawl, West Virginia, last
Michael Kamber March. For years, residents of the Appalachian coal-mining town had to rely on water trucks and bottled
deliveries, a reality unknown to most citizens in the developed world. Their fight still continues in the
courts against Massey Energy, a mountaintop coal-mining corporation, who they blame for pollution and
illnesses disrupting their community. Melissa Farlow
race — the longest relay race in human history of researchers contacted photographers on every
— in which 20 athletes spent 95 days running continent to identify existing bodies of work
focused on this crucial issue. Simultaneously,
around the globe to spread awareness of the EVEN IN PROSPEROUS CITIES in India like New Delhi and Mumbai, city dwellers often have
water access for only a few hours a day. The public water distribution system is under so much
20 runners representing 13 nationalities embarked
stress that residents must rise at 3 or 4 a.m. to pump water into rooftop storage tanks. Here
Vineela Bhardwaj vents her frustration to water authorities about frequent service failures. Battles
over the water supply have become so common that Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi, the Minister of
Water Resources, sometimes describes himself as the “Minister of Water Conflicts.”
world’s water crisis. Secondly, it is a showcase
Stuart Freedman
lawsuits and negotiations over water in the U.S. southeast, new residents of Atlanta may one day
soon turn on the tap to find it empty, southern Georgia farmlands could become permanently
parched, or economic growth in Florida and Alabama could be significantly stunted.
more economical — and perhaps temper the water disputes — as the supply of water continues
to diminish an