“Easy Water is Over”
This morning, I was looking for news about the worldwaterforum on webpages of german newspapers, and up-to-date reports I found only at “Die Tageszeitung”:
- a report on the first day stating how everybody agrees that water resources are scarce (and valuable). It is also reported how the UN acknowledges that governments do not or will not have sufficient money to support water-related infrastructure. The UN is reported to ask private companies to fill that gap and act as drinking water providers. Current object of debate seem to be large dams:
- Die Tageszeitung also reports how two people who enrolled a poster with the words “no riski damns” were escorted by police out of the venue of the congress, held in custody over night unsure about the reasons of the custody, and finally sent back to their home-countries, Germany and USA.
- a summary of the two above at 20 minuten
- The Frankfurter Rundschau on some technical innovations related to sanitary engineering
Despite the lack of current news, there are currently a plethora of water-related articles in german newspapers:
- at Die Tageszeitung about a report of the European Environmental Agency (EEA) demanding to stop wasting the resource water
- at the Sueddeutsche Zeitung entitled “the depleted planet” on the sad state of drinking water availability worldwide
- at Die Zeit an interview with the sociologist Harald Welzer who wrote the book Klimakriege. Wofür im 21. Jahrhundert getötet wird
- at Die Zeit, a quiz on Water
- at Die Zeit, a general story with pictures on water
A google search on “Wasserforum Istanbul” resulted in surprisingly few results on current news from Istanbul. I guess I am biased, but still I think news from the worldwaterforum are critical news. There has been a lot of debate recently on the future of newspapers. And a lot of newspapers have been dying. I agree with a quote o Cem Basman’s blog, originally by Clay Shirky:
“Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism.”
Are you reading daily news? Where?