Category: People Stories

Not all the news is gloomy. It doesn’t require a hero to do something heroic. And there is great merit in even small acts of water-mindfulness — because of the acts themselves and because of the kind of people it makes us. —H2O IQ editor

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Mahlagha Mallah: Mother of Iran’s Environment

Mahlagha Mallah: Mother of Iran’s Environment

Mahlagha Mallah, known as the “mother of Iran’s environment,” has devoted her life to raising awareness of environmental issues in Iran. Even on the verge of turning 100 years old, she perseveres in her efforts to protect Iran’s environment. Mallah played a role in both the 1972 founding of Iran’s Department of Environment and the 1993 founding of the Women’s Society Against Environmental Pollution. Her approach to addressing environmental issues

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Watergrabbing — A Story of Water

Watergrabbing - A Story of Water

WATERGRABBING: HOW YOU CAN SAVE THE PLANET AND HELP THE ONES DEPRIVED OF THEIR RIGHT TO WATER — The expression water grabbing or water hoarding refers to a situation in which powerful actors, public or private, are able to take control of or reallocate precious water resources for their own benefit, at the expense of local communities and ecosystems on which the communities’ livelihoods are based. Families driven from their

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Saluting Women Water Warriors

Saluting Women Water Warriors

Kayapó women bathe their children in the waters of the Xingu. Photo by Glenn Switkes.

In many parts of the world, women and girls bear a large burden of the domestic work providing water to their families and communities – collecting and carting it from wells and tanks to do the washing, cooking, cleaning, watering of animals, and growing fruits and vegetables.

Yet when it comes to decision-making around water … [more…]

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From land to water: Expanding our building horizons

From land to water: Expanding our building horizons

(Image credit: Gensler) Across the world, architects are now looking to develop onto the 71 percent of the earth’s surface that builders have largely neglected so far – the water. With half its population living below sea level, the Netherlands is a world leader in the growing area of floating buildings. The Amsterdam neighborhood of Ijburg , including a development

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A tribute to California’s ‘First Lady of Water’

Pauline L. Davis

“My jaw dropped when I pulled a carbon-copied transcript of a 1960 water committee hearing fully identifying the ‘Davis’ as Assemblyman Pauline L. Davis. A woman in the Legislature! Involved in water policy! The water committee chair, no less!”

It was, as James Brown sang in the 1960s, “a man’s, man’s, man’s world” back then – and still is, for the most part, in the world of water policy. As … [more…]