This year’s Blog Action Day – on 15 October – focuses on water.
There aren’t as many issues that are as important as water. Over a billion people don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. The health of our water systems are essential to human civilization – our coasts, rivers and lakes provide food, drinking water, and spur our economy through tourism and extracting natural resources. Our access to water has security implications: as arid areas face droughts the number of conflicts increase – the so-called “water wars”. Over all of this is the danger of climate change.
I’ve written quite a bit about one of the most important river systems in Australia – the Murray Darling Basin – a system that is dying. Over a million people in Australia live in the Murray Darling Basin, and it provides most of our food. It is under enormous threat from the effects of climate change – and after a decade of drought, the state I live in, Victoria, became a net importer of food for the first time in its history in 2009.
Blog Action Day was founded in 2007 by Melbourne-based internet entrepreneur group Envato – and has now grown enormously. Last year’s BAD looked at climate change – and I wrote a post about what unions could do about tackling climate change.
I’m a fan of Blog Action Day – and I hope to see lots of blogs I regularly read participating. Blog Action Day is, above all, about provoking discussion, raising important issues and changing discussions.
One response to “Blog Action Day is coming up”
What exactly is the UN doing to bring water to so many peple. I am reminded of KRudds recent reflection on his own chastisement and reiterating it by accusing the UN as lotsa talk and no action. Peter Curtis