Tag archives for water

The link between men and fish

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Ready for some ice-fishing. But soon there'll only be water flowing here... Photo: Johan Dahlenius/Flickr.

I just said goodbye to winter with a few days in the beautiful skiing tracks of Sälen [map], where a radiant spring sun made the snow start to melt, drip from house roofs and murmur through mointain streams. On the way home we saw people sit on the frozen lakes, fishing through drilled holes in the ice. Soon all that ice and snow will be water. And water was actually the theme of the day on Tuesday, which was UN World Water Day.

The same day this year’s winner of the Stockholm Water Prize was announced. Stephen R. Carpenter is an American professor of Zoology and Limnology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and with his research shows how lake ecosystems are affected by the surrounding landscape and by human activities.

Within the research community Stephen R. Carpenter is maybe best known for his research on what is called trophic cascades. That is a concept describing how impacts on one species in an ecosystem will “cascade” up or down in the food chain and create a wider impact. For example overfishing of large fish in a lake can lead to fewer small fish. That means more zooplankton further down the food chain, since there is no one to eat them. That, in its turn, means more algae and more eutrophication.

This research has given concrete tools for restoring eutrophicated lakes, which have been used for example in Finjasjön in the south of Sweden [map] (The whole story of lake Finjasjön’s restoration can be read here)

The prize ceremony, where professor Carpenter will receive 150 000 dollars, will be held during the World Water Week in Stockholm on August 25.

An example of trophic cascades. Source: Anthony Thorpe Lakes of Missouri Volunteer Program.

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

March 24, 2011

Thinking outside the bottle

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Photo: Ntr23 (CC: BY-NC-SA).

Bottled water is in many ways a symbolic question, that reaches beyond the emissions of plastic bottle production, the transports of the water and the waste.
This story about a visitor’s encounter with a Swedish tap makes it obvious that tasty tap water is nothing everyone counts on. But for a lot of people there is no evident need to buy bottled water. If the quality of the water coming from our taps is good, tap water is usually cleaner than stored water, and far cheaper.

Municipalities turn on the tap

Earlier I have written about how the EU delegates who attended meetings in Sweden during the European presidency were served tap water instead of bottled water. With the upcoming of the climate change debate, many municipalities allover the country, such as Uppsala, Östersund and Jönköping also decided to stop buying bottled water.
For some time the interest for buying bottled water has semmed to fade, but last year the sales of bottled water was again reported to rise. Maybe this short film, which is now being shared a lot here in Sweden, will bring the discussion up once again?

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

April 15, 2010

water

Simple ways to save lives

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bangladeshi-girl-fetching-water
In the world there are still almost 1.1 billion people without adequate access to water. Photo: Uncultured/Flickr.

Earlier this week, at the World Water Day, the winner of this year’s Stockholm Water Prize was announced. The American microbiologist Rita Colwell has spent decades researching and fighting water-spread diseases like cholera, which every year takes around 120 000 lives and infect millions according to Stockholm Water Institute.

– The biggest challenge is for all human beings to get clean water. Until now there has been too much focus on high-tech solutions, Rita Colwell said in an interview with the Swedish radio.
She also says there might be too much focus on curing cholera through vaccines and medication instead of preventing people from being infected in the first place.
One of the simple measures that Dr Rita Colwell has used is pieces of old saris, which are used by women in for example Bangladesh. By folding the textile a few times and filtering the water through it, the number of infected could be reduced by 50 per cent.

I think it is somehow relieving that these problems can be helped in such simple ways. At the same time it can be frustrating; if the solutions are available and on top of all very cheap, there is no reason that cholera should kill and infect so many.
Hopefully the findings of Rita Colwell will change this.

Swedish invention cleans water with help of the sun

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Solvatten demonstration in Nepal.

In many places of the world clean water is a scarce resource, which makes life hard for around one billion of people and causes a lot of diseases.
Now a Swedish idea can help people who lack access to clean water to purify the water themselves. The Solvatten (“Sunwater” in English) system works as a 10 liter container, which uses UV light and heat from the sun to kill microorganisms. Here is an animation that describes how it works.

Helps stopping deforestation

Where people do not have access to electricity water is often purified through boiling on a fire, which contributes to deforestation. Using the light and heat from the sun could save a lot of firewood.
Right now Solvatten is being tested in Nepal with money from the United Nations.
In an article the inventor, Petra Lundström, says that her invention has received interest from Unicef as well as from the government of Sri Lanka.

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

September 10, 2009

Rainfall energy gives water prize

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Happy prize winners. Ceren Burçak Dag in the middle. Photo: SIWI.

Every year at the World Water Week, the Stockholm Water Prize attracts great attention. The award winner this year is Bindeshwar Pathak from India, who has developed a toilet system which is improving sanitation and converting the waste into energy . (Read more about it here).
But there is also a competition for young scientists from all over the world. This year 18-year-old Ceren Burçak Dag from Nisantasi in Turkey won the prize for her idea to generate energy through piezoelectric pulses from falling rain drops.
Personally, I had never heard about piezoelectricity before, but according to an explanation I found it is “ ability of some materials to generate an electric potential when mechanical stress – such as the impact of a raindrop – is applied”. What Ceren Burçak Dag has done is using a “smart” material that transfers the kinetic energy of raindrops into electrical energy.

Reducing CO2 emissions

The prize jury says in its statement that it is pleased to see young people take action to identify technical solutions to reduce CO2 emissions.
– I hope that my work will contribute to the development of the next generation of energy panels where rain, sun, and wind are combined, says Ceren Burçak Dag.

Other meetings

During the World Water Week there are also many other meetings and side events going on, where the situation of developing countries is brought up. For example, The Association of European Parliamentarians for Africa is meeting to highlight African countries, climate change and its links with development.
The association’s general secretary Pär Granstedt says in a comment before the meeting that Africa has contributed least to the emissions that is causing the climate change, but is hardest hit by their effects.
- We need to develop common strategies to cope with the impact of climate change both in Europe and Africa, and we should learn from each other. However, we should under no circumstances accept that new burdens are loaded
on Africa. Europe has a responsibility to help Africa to cope with the climate change.

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

August 24, 2009

Tag archives for water

The link between men and fish