Action-packed day of blogging about water

Friday’s Blog Action Day – where the subject was water – had 5656 blogs from 143 countries reaching 40 million readers. This blog contributed with:

Blog Action Day: Power Through Water,

Ram pumps provide water for 50,000 people
Surfing 4,623 blogs on water
Treadle pumps bring water to nearly 4m people
4,482 bloggers writing on one topic: water

For Twitter users, the hashtag is #BAD10. Check out a live feed of #BAD10 posts.

For last year's Blog Action Day on climate change, Svati Bhogle, from TIDE, a 2008 Ashden Award winner, wrote about "the efficient use of energy, as different from abuse in the developed world and misuse in the developing world."

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Surfing 4,623 blogs on water

Well now it's 4,623 bloggers reaching 34 million readers.

You can read some really scary facts about water. Or you can watch the story of bottled water. Or you can get tips about using vegetable water for cooking rice. Or you can learn about the daily search for water from an indigenous blogger in Balochistan, Pakistan.

Or you can read the vicar's wife on the relationship between drinking water and sewers. Or a Foreign Office mandarin on rain water catchment tanks in Kenya (maji ni uhai means 'water is life' in Swahili).

Or you can see how a picture of a woman in a bottle illustrates how this issue hits women hardest. Or you can follow the stats about #BAD10. Or hear about five water movies. Or get advice for gardeners.

And that's only 10 of the blogs out there. There's another 4,613 to go.

See also Treadle pumps bring water to nearly 4m people.
4,482 bloggers writing on one topic: water
Blog action day announces water as this year's topic
For Twitter users, the hashtag is #BAD10. Check out a live feed of #BAD10 posts.

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Treadle pumps bring water to nearly 4m people

The demand for better irrigation in India is huge. 98 million farmers are smallholders and most only grow one crop a year, watered by the monsoon. For small farmers diesel pumps are too expensive meaning that any irrigation is slow and carried out by hand. In response, IDEI has set up a distribution system for their low-cost (US$30-US$42) treadle pump which have transformed the lives of smallholders in India.

The technology uses ‘foot power’ to pump water for crop irrigation. IDEI have even developed ‘drip’ irrigation systems– a way of making the very best use of limited water supplies through targeting it at very specific areas. Farmers can now grow two or even three crops a year and incomes in some areas have doubled. IDEI have installed over 750,000 treadle pumps bringing benefits to nearly four million people.

You can find out more about the technology behind treadle pumps from our website and watch IDEI's film on our YouTube page.

See also: 4,482 bloggers writing on one topic: water
Blog action day announces water as this year's topic
For Twitter users, the hashtag is #BAD10. Check out a live feed of #BAD10 posts.

Click here to read the rest of this post.

4,482 bloggers writing on one topic: water

Today is Blog Action Day 2010, when 4,482 bloggers (so far) from 133 countries will be blogging about a single topic to their 33 million readers. This year the subject is water.

We'll be blogging throughout the day about the best blogs, best tweets, and best practice, and sharing - along the way - the stories of Ashden Award winners in hydro and water pumping.

For Twitter users, the hashtag is #BAD10. Check out a live feed of #BAD10 posts.

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Blog Action Day announces 'water' as this year's topic

Early this morning, Blog Action Day announced that the topic for October 15 is 'water'. (Last year it was climate change; the year before it was poverty.) The Ashden Awards blog is one of nearly 800 blogs that have signed up to write about water that Friday.

Blog Action Day brings together bloggers from around the world to post about the same issue on the same day "with the aim of sparking a global discussion and driving collective action".

Last year 13,606 bloggers from 156 countries joined in the conversation about climate change.

We'll be blogging news on October 15 about Ashden Awards winners, such as: IDEI, CRELUZ, Practical Action and AIDFI (currently nominated for World Challenge award).

As Mary Robinson said in New York last week: "Water is the oil of the 21st century and waste is the gold." Maybe waste will be next year's topic.

From 2009: We've signed up, have you? and Svati Bhogle, from TIDE, a 2008 Ashden Award winner, writes on last year's Blog Action Day about "the efficient use of energy, use as different from abuse in the developed world and misuse in the developing world."

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Blog Action Day 2009: Climate Change

Copenhagen: our solutions

A casual glance at the daily newspapers here suggests that Copenhagen is all about expression of dissent, discontent and in general dissonance when it should ideally be about collective resolve and affirmative action in the context of climate change.

Of course Copenhagen is about reducing emissions globally but it is also about equitable and efficient use of energy, use as different from abuse in the developed world and misuse in the developing world. Forecasts suggest that with population growth, there would be progressively more energy poor people. 2 billion people mostly in the developing world depend on traditional fuels (wood etc.) for cooking and heating. Fortunately the fuel of the poor is also a zero GHG fuel. Unfortunately their cook stove is so inefficient that they cannot argue their case for sustainability of biomass use and leverage their contribution to global emission reduction unless they move to an energy efficient stove.

A quick back of the envelope calculation shows that these two billion people are consuming at least 1.2 million tons of biomass everyday for cooking. Fuel efficient stoves have the potential to reduce cooking energy needs by half. But this would require collective resolve among policy makers globally and deep thought by the policy implementers on the ground. If the rhetoric of the past has not translated into a symphony with visible relief to the poor, it is because musicians with different talents have not been a part of the orchestra.

If Copenhagen can highlight the need for energy efficient solutions for wood fuel based cooking needs and direct that planners, technology developers, supply chain creators, financiers, implementers, thinkers to come together for an equitable, clean, green, healthy, cooking energy solution, then Copenhagen would have delivered a strong message.
Written by Svati Bhogle, TIDE - a 2008 Ashden Award winner

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Blog Action Day 2009

We've signed up, have you? This year, Blog Action Day is on Climate Change:

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