Image: SIWI

The World Water Week conference is taking place in Stockholm right now. In keeping with the United Nations water theme for 2013, the focus is on building partnerships and cooperation across traditional boundaries between “governments, civil society, and the science and business communities to find and implement solutions to growing water challenges”.

For me, the challenge is reaching across assumptions that because we see rain, or large bodies of water, or experience flooding, that we can’t also experience a shortage or absence of clean water in the very same place – or that fresh water is another resource that is so abundant that it can’t be depleted.

Experience has shown that breaking ingrained habits doesn’t have to take decades. From the personal habits of lawn-watering or inefficient appliances to the inefficient commercial use of water (fracking comes to mind), new approaches from various key players could turn the tide in a very short time.

Clean Water

One of the main assumptions to overcome is that some of us might, in some way, remain exempt from ever being included on the list of water have-nots.

More:

World Water Week official site. Many of the presentations can be viewed via live streaming.

The conference is organized by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), which you can visit here.