It's Maria's MutS and Stuff, a great idea i ARD Radio. Welcome to
Maria's MutS and Stuff and with me is Sandra Postel. She is the director
of Global Water Policy Project as well as the co founder. She's written many,
many, many books about her passion, which is fresh water. So
we're here to chat about water today and National Geographic Kids book. Water very
important thing in our lives that I think many people don't realize. So Sandra,
thank you for talking with me today. Oh it's a pleasure to be
here. Thank you, thank you. So first let's explain, help my
listeners understand. Explain to me what Global Water Policy Project is exactly. Well,
it's it's basically an effort to connect the dots between the science and the
policy and the practice around water and understand how water, you know, influences
agriculture and the environment, and even you know, international relations as water and
rivers flows between countries and states. So it really covers a lot of ground.
But it's all about how we can have a more secure water future for
both human societies as well as the natural world. Right, I mean,
water is a very very important thing even for us, just as humans and
living on a daily basis, which I think sometimes people don't realize, you
know, something will go wrong and it's because they're dehydrated. Yeah, I
mean water is central to good health. Exactly. We can go a lot
longer without food than we can go without water. Water is critical to life,
right, No, of course, of course. So with the National
Geographic Kids Book Water, it was this book put together basically to enlighten kids.
So I mean, since there are future and the plant, we're handing
them a planet that needs some help. I guess is a wake up call
for children. We are handing the next generations a planet that needs some help.
Absolutely well put thank you. I think the and I think the you
know, the hope for the book is really to engage more people, Um,
you know, kids, their families, their parents, their grandparents in
this water challenge. You know that's really kind of take it on. Um.
You know, we all sort of take water for granted. It comes
out of the tap for most of us, and there it is. But
when we look beyond, it's it's a big challenge to have enough water for
all the things we need it for and a healthy world around us at the
same time. So I think the hope is to have more kids identify as
water warriors and really you know, look to conservation and protection of water as
as a big part of what they do. Right, Oh, I love
that water warriors. That's perfect. So I would I mean, I'm guessing
or if this is obvious, that our biggest challenge or the biggest problem with
water is it's that arm waters are polluted, polluted, whether it's oceans,
lakes, rivers that they're polluted. Is that correct? Or is there a
worse problem that they're drying up? Well, it's both. Yeah, pollution
is certainly a problem. And you know, when I was a kid,
we're worried about, you know, just the pollution of rivers. It was
so bad that we had rivers like the Kayahoga in Ohio catching fire from the
oil slits on top and so on. We made some progress, We've made
a lot of progress, but there's still pollution, of course, that we're
worried about. We're worried about peace as we're worried about nitrogen and phosphorus causing
these algal blooms and our lakes and coastal bays and so on. The pollution
is absolutely a problem to be addressed and something we're very concerned about plastic pollutions.
But you raised another important issue, which is the supply of water and
the fact that in many places where taking more water than nature is putting back
in, so we're depleting it and that's just not sustainable in the long term.
You know, we're seeing this with groundwater, which literally is out of
sight, out of mind, and so we you know, we pump more
water out than is being recharged by actual rainfall, and so that supply is
diminishing. And that's a concern, especially with more drought, because when the
rivers are drying up and the reservoirs are shrinking, where do we turn for
water? We often turn to our underground supply. In groundwater depleted that then
that's a bigger problem. Sure. Sure, And I'm guessing again that the
droughts and everything. How how drastic the weather. I feel like the past
couple of years that are the weather across the country. It's just so drastic,
especially in places that don't usually have that tie. Meaning it's snowing in
Texas, or it's really hot in a place that's usually very cold. And
I guess this is all the result of climate change, which is why we
have the droughts where we normally wouldn't have that and places are drying up.
Is that correct, Yeah, we have to use extremes. You know,
we can't always say for sure that a particular weather event is a result of
climate change. We're getting you know, scientists are getting better at being able
to do the analyzes that allow us to say that this event, whether it's
a drought or a flood, the probability was much higher because of climate change.
We're are getting better at that kind of attribution science as it's called.
So we can't always tell. But but you're absolutely right that what we expect
is what we're starting to see, which is that we're going to have more
extremes, so we have more extreme throughout. You know, the Colorado River
has been in the news this week, and that's basin has been basically in
a twenty three year drought. It's started around two thousand. There have been
a you know, some years of respite with more rain and snowpack, but
for the most part it's been a twenty three year drought, which is the
worst on record, the worst in twelve hundred years as far as we can
tell. So this is a big deal. And and then you point to
the floods. You know, we had tremendous floods in Houston in twenty seventeen
with Hurricane Harvey, Florida with Hurricane Irma, Puerto Rico with Hurricane Maria,
and then many since then. And these are worse than we've come to expect,
you know. Plus we tend to be living in harm's way a little
bit more in the floodplains of rivers and so on. So so it's a
big challenge. And you know in building that you know, resilience to these
climate impacts is is going to be very important, both droughts and floods and
wildfires which are often in the headwaters of our drinking water supplies and so on,
right right, So, I mean, if there's one, there are
so I feel like there are so many things that people can do to help
this, because I feel like now is the time it really needs to be
taken seriously, obviously by adults, but as well as children, which is
where the book is very helpful for children to learn. But if there was
maybe I don't even know if there is an answer to this, that there's
one one thing that everyone who is listening right now can do that they might
not be doing to help the water situation. Or is there one thing?
I mean, maybe there's not an answer to that. I don't know,
well the kind of there is. I mean, I think we can all
plug in, you know, in the way that we most identify. Right.
But the basic challenge in my mind has two parts, and you know,
one is to shrink our human water footprint. You know, the reality
is water on Earth is finite. There's only so much there and because human
population has risen so much now to now eight billions, our demands for water
have increased. So so we can figure out how to shrink that human water
footprint. It can't keep getting bigger because water's finite, Right, We've got
to figure that out, and there's a lot of a lot of ways to
do that. We can look at our personal water footprints. You know,
what is our diet consists of how much water does it take to to produce
the diets that we eat. We can probably change our diet a bit,
tweak it a bit, and use less water, right. We can We
can look at our energy use and energy it takes water to create energy,
but turning off the lights. Turning off anything that we're not using saves water.
We can think about our material life, right, we can think about
buying used things rather than new things, which and you know, so there's
a lot that we can do if we look at our personal water footprint.
And again we can feel like, well, I'm just you know, just
one person, what difference does that make? But if you multiply that by
ten hundreds, you know, millions of people, well that creates a difference.
And that's the other things to get the word out talk about water.
You know, we're so accustomed to water just coming out of the tap that
we don't think of it very often as an issue unless you have a pollution
problem. That's very evident to us, right, right, exact thing about
it, and you realize, yeah, realizing and then the second piece,
so shrink that water footprint and then return some water to the natural world.
The natural world is hurting very badly, and we need to return water there
in very strategic ways. And the good message there is that nature is resilient.
If we give water back to nature again in strategic ways, it will
bounce back and life will come back. We have taken down in the United
States overall, we have removed sixteen hundred dams over the last thirty years,
Dams that were no longer really doing, you know, used for their intended
purpose, right, maybe they were built in the nineteenth centuries for textile mills
in New England and so on. A lot of those dams have come down
because they're unsafe or unnecessary. Well, that has opened up miles and miles
and miles of river for habitat, for fish to come back and aquatic life
to come back, and we do see it come back, often faster than
we would have imagined. We've seen large dams come down in Washington State on
the Ilowa River where you know, four thousand nut salmon came back within a
few months, So you can see this resilience. We've seen it in dams
coming down in Maine and in many places where life comes back. To me,
that that creates an honest hope that if we are able to do this
to shrink our human water footprint, would save that water, return some of
it to nature. We can establish auld better balance for the web of life
that we're a part of. And I think that's a really important message,
and to me, it's where the inspiration comes from that that we can you
know, we can build that kind of security for ourselves and to the natural
world we're part of, sure, I mean, because that's what we need
for the humanity to survive really and to continue. That's right. You know,
we think of ourselves as separate from but we're not. We're part of
this, of this web of life. And you know, if we're in
a dry area and we have, you know, a very thirsty green lawn,
but what about you know, changing some of that lawn out for native
plants that brought local flora and fauna and uses less water and is maybe good
for the local species. Um pollinator plants that are good for bees would be
a great thing to think about, right, sure, sure, So,
so there's a lot we can do right in our own yards to be part
of the solution. And again, it seems like a drop in the bucket,
but if you add many drops in the bucket, you start to get
something, right. Yeah, I mean, there's a reason why there's that
saying it takes a village, you know, and I know it takes a
village. So if we all do our part, I mean, it's True's
so funny because I was going to bring up about people watering their lawns because
it makes me crazy when as we get into the summer months, It's like,
why are you wasting all that water? Who cares if your lawn is
you know, velvety green or a little bit brown, But you're right,
just replace it, you know, and put bushes and plants and flowers,
because I feel like it's such a waste all summer and spring because everybody's you
know, yeah, you know, I think Las Vegas, some of the
innicipal water utilities in the West will actually pay you to rip out your lawn
and put in something more native. So nice of it. Yeah, cash
for grass program. They'll give you cash for the grass. Right, Well,
that's a great idea to put in something. Yeah, yeah, that's
that's made a difference. And I'll quirky Las Vegas, you know, some
of the Western cities have done this and it helps people, you know,
to just reorient their their landscape. Sure, and I love when I see
a house that has you know, the like a cement path going to the
door, but they have all these different like bushes and they have plants,
like exotic plants or just it's just it's very it's very unique, I think,
and it stands out and creative and I just like it a lot better
than just a green lawn, you know, I mean, yeah, yeah,
no, it's true. So um so well, I thank you because
you are just so so chock full of information. And I know that we
have a time limit, because I would love to talk to you even more
and more. But I know that there were some silly things. I figured
let's leave on like a silly note. Um, is there are there any
myths or something about water that we've all thought since we were little kids and
it's not true at all, like something silly or at all? Yeah,
it's funny, it's about that. What's silly about One of the things that
I think, it's just kind of inspiring that I think about and I think
others have found these too, is the idea of, you know, the
dinosaurs drinking some of the same water we might have used to make our tea
this morning, right, And yeah, yeah, it's this fascination you know
that water is just it's because it's finite. It's cycles all the time,
across across the ages, across space, and so it's in a way it's
sort of very connecting realization, right that the molecules that are in our life
today could have also been in the lives of the dinosaurs, and they could
have drunk the same water we're drinking today, you know, at different time,
different space. But water is always cycling, right, and it's it's
a marble really of the Earth. It is to me, it's Earth's greatest
gift, this water cycle. It's we learned about it probably in second or
third or fourth grade, and then we sort of forget about it. But
it is really a magic thing, and it's we're so fortunate to live on
a planet that has this miraculous water cycle. Sure, and the trick is
to preserve it, protect it, restore it, and keep it going absolutely,
And I think that too often, and you make such a valid point
because I feel like waters just taken for granted by most people. They don't
really You're right, they don't think about it until it doesn't come out of
their faucet, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, And to really start
to appreciate all that it's doing, whether we're seeing it or not, you
know, it's keeping everything going right. Right. Well, I thank you
so much for all that you do. I thank you for your information and
your knowledge. Sandro Postel from Global Water Policy Project along with nat GEO kids
book Water, which I think my listeners would love to pick up because it's
it's great. It's it's a book. I mean it is for kids,
but I'm enjoying reading it and I'm not a kid, So so thank you.
Absolutely yeah, you're come. It's a great place to dive in.
Literally absolutely absolutely well. Thank you again for doing all that you do,
Sandra, and thanks for talking with us today. Thank you, appreciate it.
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