DC Environmental Film Festival on Global Water Crisis, Pakistan, China, Bangladesh, Chattahoochee | Pulitzer Center

DC Environmental Film Festival on Global Water Crisis, Pakistan, China, Bangladesh, Chattahoochee Pulitzer Center

Let's watch a series of cool water movies in DC on March 21 - please join if you can.
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Event date: March 21, 2011 - 6:00pm


Carnegie Institution for Science, Elihu Root Auditorium, 1530 P St., NW (Metro: Dupont Circle)

RSVP with Eventbrite

The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting presents films on water and population to mark World Water Day, March 22.

Discussion with Katherine Bliss, Director of the Global Water Policy Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and filmmakers Stephen Sapienza, Rhett Turner, Jonathan Wickham and Fred de Sam Lazaro follows screening. Moderated by Pulitzer Center Executive Director Jon Sawyer.

DHAKA’S CHALLENGE: A MEGACITY STRUGGLES WITH WATER, SANITATION AND HYGIENE (Bangladesh, 2011, 7 min.) Over 1,000 people move to Dhaka everyday, but almost two-thirds of Dhaka’s sewage is untreated and left to seep into waterways and the ground. Tens of thousands of people die each year of cholera, diarrhea, and other waterborne diseases in Bangladesh—but the country is also an innovator in promising new approaches to providing clean water and decent sanitation for all. Produced by Emmy Award Winner Stephen Sapienza.

DONGTING HU: A LAKE IN FLUX (China, 2011, 5 min.) The surface area of Dongting Lake has fallen by half in the last 70 years. Lying off of the great Yangtze River, it is one of China's most important lakes. Land reclamation, pollution and overfishing threaten its existence. Produced by National Geographic China photographer Sean Gallagher.

WATER SCARCITY ON THE INDUS RIVER (India and Pakistan, 2010, 7 min.) The recent Indus flood put attention on too much water but Pakistan's real problem is too little—and too many people. This PBS NewsHour segment investigates how the impending water crisis might be related to population growth and poorly planned development. Reporting by PBS NewsHour Correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro.

CHATTAHOOCHEE: FROM WATER WAR TO WATER VISION (USA, 2010, 8 min. excerpt) For 20 years Alabama, Florida and Georgia have been locked in a fierce battle over one river—the Chattahoochee. Through the eyes of ordinary people up and down its banks, the film explores what's at stake and asks the question: Can differences be resolved before the waters run dry? Produced by Rhett Turner and Jonathan Wickham for Georgia Public Broadcasting.

The World's Toilet Crisis / Washington DC screening / October 28

For those of you in Washington DC, please plan to join us for an important screening of The World's Toilet Crisis.

Event date: October 28, 2010 - 7:00pm - 8:30pm

Here is the event flyer.

An estimated 40% of the world's population has no access to toilets and defecate anywhere they can. This documentary investigates how developing countries are trying to solve an epidemic that few people want to talk about--the world's toilet crisis.

Join the Pulitzer Center, AED, PATH, and Water Advocates for a screening of the film followed by a panel discussion with Lisa Biagiotti, producer of the film and multimedia journalist for PBS and Current TV, Peter Sawyer from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and Janie Hayes from PATH.

Thursday, October 28, 7pm
"Bathroom Pass" Exhibit at AED IDEA: EXCHANGE
1875 Connecticut Ave, NW (corner of T St) Washington, DC

Free and open to the public. A reception will follow the screening.

Please RSVP to WinSPartnership@gmail.com.

http://pulitzercenter.org/event/screening-worlds-toilet-crisis-aed-washington-dc

Safe Drinking Water, Sanitation, and HIV/AIDS

Recently published on the Pulitzer Center's World Water Day Writing Contest:

It's springtime 2010 and you are traveling through sub-Saharan Africa, say Malawi, Botswana, South Africa, back up to Uganda, in rural farming communities, in slums, in burgeoning cities. You see farmers supporting their families, workers putting in long days, parents stretching to send their sons and daughters to school and trying to save for a rainy day, presented with opportunities and obstacles similar to those facing many others across the planet.

You also see those same people struggling to escape from two massive public health challenges that for most of the rest of the planet are increasingly rare: a lack of safe drinking water and toilets, and HIV/AIDS. You return to your relatively comfortable home inspired to do something tangible and holistic about both issues.

In trying to figure out the linkages between WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) and HIV/AIDS, your research reveals that the two issues are more closely connected than you realized.

According to USAID, "People living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) are at increased risk for diarrheal diseases, and are far more likely to suffer severe and chronic complications if infected. Recent evidence demonstrates the efficacy of hand washing, safe water and sanitation in reducing diarrhea among PLWHA by 25% or more." That makes sense, and is even more convincing to you than the brutally true soundbite "You can't take antiretrovirals without safe drinking water, because you'll either throw them up or lose them out the other end because of diarrhea."

And on the flipside, USAID continues: "And people living without safe water and sanitation, with the dire poverty that often accompanies it, are likely less educated and more likely to contract HIV." So people living with HIV need safe water and toilets to prevent potentially fatal opportunistic diarrhea, and those people with safe water and toilets are less likely to become the next victims of HIV.

So what do you do?

You start by volunteering with a water and sanitation nonprofit focused on providing HIV/AIDS treatment centers and surrounding communities in Tanzania with safe drinking water, with toilets, and with handwashing stations and soap. That nonprofit with its holistic approach to both drinking water and HIV works with entire communities to make sure there is 100% handwashing with soap, and zero open defecation, thus reducing the risk of waterborne diarrhea (e.g. cholera) transmission, particularly for those with immune systems compromised by HIV. All brought to you by safe water.

You write letters to Congress, suggesting that taxpayer-funded HIV treatment initiatives like PEPFAR continue their life-saving work with ARVs, but also include complementary safe drinking water and sanitation programs both for outpatients at HIV clinics and for their families and communities.

You blog and tweet that HIV/AIDS is receiving an enormous amount of funding, and justifiably so, but diarrheal disease, 90% of which is caused by unsafe drinking water and inadequate sanitation, continues to kill millions of under fives annually. You underscore to your followers that the world has known how to solve the water problem for over a century and that fatal waterborne diarrhea should be eliminated across the planet.

You acknowledge to yourself that if every human life is indeed equal, you can ignore neither HIV-positive people nor those susceptible to easily preventable, fatal waterborne diarrhea.

This holistic approach will take a big bite out of the 4,500 daily child deaths associated with unsafe water and sanitation, and contribute to a better quality of life and longer survival times for people living with HIV/AIDS.

So the next time you travel through sub-Saharan Africa, you will see farmers farming, workers earning their paychecks, girls going to school, without the twin scourges of unsafe water and HIV shadowing their lives.

World Water Day Writing Contest

World Water Day Writing Contest

The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting is partnering with Helium to get your voice heard on the most pressing issues of the day. We want to know your thoughts on questions raised by Pulitzer Center-sponsored reporting projects around the globe – and the winning essays will be showcased on the Pulitzer Center’s website and on Helium. Winning writers will also receive a Pulitzer Center Citizen Journalist Award.

Check out the links on the left and right columns of this page, pointing to Pulitzer Center reporting resources, upcoming events and some of the organizations that have taken the lead on water issues around the world. When selecting the winner from the top 10 ranked entries on Helium, the Pulitzer Center especially values vivid, well-articulated essays that reflect unusual insight, a clear point of view and, where appropriate, original reporting. Anything fictionalized or not based on the writer’s own observations should be clearly marked as such in the body of the text.

The deadline for the World Water Day Writing Contest is Wednesday March 31. The Pulitzer Center Citizen Journalist Award in this contest will be announced on Friday April 9.

ALSO and again, check out http://www.waterday.org/.