50 percentThe number of people who don’t have access to the quality of water available to the citizens of Rome 2,000 years ago

S THE ARAL SEA, once a glistening body of water, has lost two-thirds

of its volume because its source rivers were diverted for cotton irrigation

during the Soviet era. Previously the fourth-largest lake in the world – the

size of Southern California – much of it is now a dry graveyard of rusting

shipwrecks. This desertification has produced toxic dust, resulting in

respiratory diseases and cancers in communities downwind of the lake.

Gerd Ludwig

S SLUM DWELLERS scramble for water in Jai Hind Camp in the heart of

Delhi, India. The camp is home to more than 4,000 migrant workers who are

dependent on daily deliveries from public and private water trucks. Ironically,

the middle class in India, which receives water via home faucets, pays a tenth

of what the poor pay for their water delivered by truck. India has nearly 17

percent of the world’s population but only about 4 percent of its freshwater

resources. Stuart Freedman

5.3 billionThe number of people — two-thirds of the world’s population — who will suffer from water shortages by 2025

We call our planet Earth, but its surface is mainly water. We

should call it Ocean. In the hollows of space, Earth abides as a

sparkling oasis, afloat with jumbo islands, and always half

hidden beneath a menagerie of clouds.

In my upstate New York town, seven waterfalls tumble and spume

in lofty dialects of water. Liquid scarves loop through glacier-carved gorges, and winter reminds

us that light, airy bits of water can hurdle fences, collapse buildings and bring a burly city to its

knees. In winter, ice forms a cataract on the eye of Lake Cayuga, but the lake never freezes

solid. It can’t.

Luckily for us. Eccentric right down to our atoms, we’d be impossible without water’s weird

bag of tricks. The litany of we’re-only-here-because begins with this chilling one: We’re only

here because ice floats. Other liquids contract and sink when they freeze, but water alone

expands, in the process growing minute triangular pyramids that clump to form spacious, holey

designs that float free. If ice didn’t rise, the oceans would have frozen solid long ago, along with

all the wells, springs and rivers. Without this presto-chango of water, an element that one

moment slips like silk through the hands and the next collapses rooftops and chisels gorges,

Earth would be barren.

Since life bloomed in the seas, we need perpetual sips of fresh water to thrive. Become

dehydrated, as I once did in Florida, and the brain’s salt flats dry out, mental life dulls, and only

electrolytes dripped into a vein keep death at bay. We are walking lagoons who quaff water S THERE IS NO MORE or no less water available for human use now than there

was at the dawn of humankind. But some areas of the planet have always had

more than others. In Canada, where karst limestone cliffs line Death Lake in the

Northwest Territories, a twentieth of the world’s population enjoys almost a tenth

of the world’s fresh surface water. Raymond Gehman, Getty ImagesDrinking Dinosaur Water 27

132 Blue Planet Run

IN REGION AFTER REGION AROUND THE GLOBE, water — or put another way, control over

rapidly diminishing supplies of clean water — is at the heart of many of the world’s most

raw geopolitical disputes, some of which have already rippled into dangerously destabilizing

conflicts.

Not surprisingly, among the hottest flashpoints is the Middle East, where water is at a premium

and disagreements are in abundance. Virtually every political, social and military strategy

undertaken by Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and other nations in the area is driven by

its impact on access to water. Consider the Golan Heights, captured by Israel during the Six-

Day War in 1967. Formerly southwest Syria, this rugged plateau is home to headwaters of the

Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee, two of Israel’s most essential sources of water. Despite

Syria’s saber rattling and widespread international condemnation for its occupation of this

territory, Israel refuses to retreat from the Golan Heights because it fears that Syria would

divert the water supply, as had been threatened in the early 1960s.

Similarly, the 2006 Lebanon-Israeli war was fought primarily in southern

Lebanon, where tributaries of the Jordan River lie. Hezbollah

has vowed to control the water resources for Lebanon, even if

Israel has to do with less.

Meanwhile, in a mirror image of these disputes, the Palestinian rejection of peace accords in

the late 1990s grew in large part out of concern that these pacts ensured that Israel could

determine how much water Palestinian areas receive. The Palestinians claim that Israel has

capped their per capita water consumption at about 18 gallons of water per day, compared to

about 92 gallons for the typical Israeli.

It’s no wonder that soon after signing peace treaties with Israel, the late King Hussein of Jordan

and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt pointedly noted that only a quarrel over water could bring

them back to war with Israel.

In large or small ways, similar brinksmanship occurs with disturbing regularity in regions already

tense with enmity that has evolved over generations:

S In Southern Africa, the waters of the Okavango River basin are pulled in four directions

by Angola, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe, with hardly a cordial word spoken;

S In the Indian-controlled territories of Kashmir, where headwaters of the Indus River

basin reside, Pakistan has threatened to use nuclear weapons against India if any of its

water supply is interrupted;

S AN ARMED GUIDE walks on a cliff above the Nile River near Amarna, Egypt. The Nile flows

through 10 countries in eastern Africa, but by force of a nearly 80-year-old treaty, Egypt commands

most of its waters, a source of dispute and strained relations for decades. Upstream countries, such as

Ethiopia and Sudan, have proposed dams on the river to aid their own development. But these plans

have been condemned by Egypt as it anticipates its population doubling over the next 50 years.

Kenneth Garrett, National Geographic, Getty Images

102 Blue Planet Run We're All Downstream 103

FOUL SMELLING WATER mixed with coal had been running from Kenny Stroud’s faucet for more

than a decade before clean tap water was finally provided by the city of Rawl, West Virginia, last March.

For years, residents of the Appalachian coal-mining town had to rely on water trucks and bottled

deliveries, a reality unknown to most citizens in the developed world. Their fight still continues in the

courts against Massey Energy, a mountaintop coal-mining corporation, who they blame for pollution and

illnesses disrupting their community. Melissa Farlow

ALLISON COLE says the water in her well in Sheridan, Wyoming, turned into slurry after

gas drilling operations began nearby. The rolling plains of the Powder River Basin have been

transformed by the drilling. Forty thousand wells and hundreds of miles of roads, pipelines and

power lines now cover the landscape. To access the methane, companies pump millions of gallons

of salty groundwater out from deep coal seams. Area residents have said the process pollutes their

surface water and groundwater. Joel Sartore

EVEN IN PROSPEROUS CITIES in India like New Delhi and Mumbai, city dwellers often have

water access for only a few hours a day. The public water distribution system is under so much

stress that residents must rise at 3 or 4 a.m. to pump water into rooftop storage tanks. Here

Vineela Bhardwaj vents her frustration to water authorities about frequent service failures. Battles

over the water supply have become so common that Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi, the Minister of

Water Resources, sometimes describes himself as the “Minister of Water Conflicts.”

Stuart Freedman

It will cost up to $1 trillion in the next 30 years to clean up contaminated groundwater at some 300,000 sites in the United States. The world’s major cities could save more than 40 percent of their annual water supplies by fixing leaks in water mains and pipes.

Like Ashok, Jin had lost a loved one, his wife, and had spent months in deep mourning; his

heartache seemed bottomless and immeasurable. But that day Jin was different. His eyes were

filled with fire and purpose. He wanted to do something to honor Linda. He asked me which of

the problems facing the world could actually be fixed. I suggested he focus on clean water. He

nodded, and within minutes, he came up with an extraordinary event to get the world to pay

attention to the global water crisis: He would organize the world’s longest relay race, with 20

runners who would serve as messengers of hope. As these runners circumnavigated the globe,

they would let people know what ordinary citizens could do to help.

What struck me that day was not just the intensity but the sheer scope of Jin’s dreams. He was

determined to solve the world’s growing water crisis and prepared to commit everything he had

to that cause. I left Avatar’s that day once again in awe of the power of human imagination and will

— and committed to helping Jin achieve his goal in any way I could.

Since then, Jin has never looked back. And the Blue Planet Run Foundation is a testament to his

tenacity and love.

As this book so powerfully illustrates, there is an endless number of good people and good ways

for humanity to solve the problem of providing fresh water to our fellow humans. We are only

limited by our creativity and our desire — and as Jin has already shown us, with those there are no

bounds.

People in the developed world love to help, and heaven knows that help is needed. At the same

time, poor people are capable of creating everything they need — including access to pure

water — if they are not prevented from doing so. We see the poor as lacking, but the poor see

a shortfall in our understanding. They know that their poverty comes from a lack of power and a

lack of rights, rights that are constantly being assaulted by corporate and international policies and

governmental corruption, actions they had no say in. “Fixing” the water problem is an opportunity

to remove the roadblocks to the creative and self-organizing genius of human beings who want to

care for themselves.

That is the genius of Jin Zidell’s vision. He understands that the answer to the world’s water crisis

rests with people, community and a deep-seated altruism that unites us more truly than distrust

or hate. It is that philosophy that powers the Peer Water Exchange, his remarkable new enterprise

that will enjoin thousands of nongovernmental organizations to find, fund and share the best water

projects around the world.

More visibly, that philosophy is embodied in the Blue Planet Run itself. Those 20 dedicated runners

carried the message to all that undrinkable water should be unthinkable in today’s world. By

encircling the globe with runners, Jin Zidell has created a symbol, a circle in our hearts and minds,

a closing of the loop of love, care and responsibility that people share for each other. If the Blue

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S In Sri Lanka, violent conflicts have broken out between government armies and a rebel

group, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who closed a provincial sluice gate in protest

over government delays in improving the nation’s water system;

S In Kenya, dozens were killed and thousands fled their homes when youths from the

Maasai and Kikuyu tribal communities fought with machetes, spears, bows and arrows

and clubs over water in the Rift Valley.

The behavior is irrational, yet the motivation has an undeniable logic. Decades of poorly

designed irrigation techniques, the construction of massive dams, toxic dumping, wetlands and

forest destruction, industrial pollution, residential sprawl, lack of conservation and misuse have

taken a dire toll on global water resources, and clean fresh water is becoming scarcer in every

corner of the planet. The worst conditions are in places like Haiti, Gambia, Cambodia and

Mali, where residents subsist on an average of less than 2 gallons of water per day — fewer

than three large bottles of bottled water and well below the 13 gallons per day considered

the amount of water needed to meet a minimum quality of life. With less and less water to go

around, the idea that people would begin to fight over what’s left — and over who determines

who gets what remains — is anything but outlandish.

And while richer countries like the United States have been hiding water shortages with

engineering sleights of hand, this strategy is now backfiring. Southeast Florida, southern

California, Atlanta and parts of Texas are all likely to be dry within 20 years if their growth

patterns and management of water aren’t sharply altered.

In the United States, the water wars are more often waged in court. For example, after

30 years and no end to the amount of money being spent on attorney fees, three states in

the southeast are still feuding over the Chattahoochee River. Rising north of Atlanta, the

Chattahoochee is the sole water supply for the sprawling city’s metropolitan area as well as a

source of downstream water for two neighbor states, Alabama and Florida. Providing water

for Atlanta’s uncontrolled population boom — the city has grown from 2.2 million people in

1980 to 3.7 million people in 2000 — severely taxes the Chattahoochee. The city’s largest

treatment plant tapped 3.8 billion gallons a year of the river’s water when it opened in 1991;

now it pumps nearly 20 billion gallons annually. If, as expected, Atlanta’s population reaches 5

million by 2025, the Chattahoochee won’t be able to handle the load.

But that isn’t slowing Atlanta down. Instead, the city is aggressively making plans to squeeze

more water out of the Chattahoochee by building a dozen additional dams and reservoirs on

the river. This, in turn, has raised the ire of Alabama and Florida, which claim that Georgia is

stealing the river for itself. Farmers in southern Georgia are siding with Alabama and Florida

against Atlanta, as their irrigation allotment falls. Depending on the outcome of the many

KIBBUTZ HATZERIM gained a territorial foothold in Israel’s Negev Desert

and kicked off a global revolution in agriculture when it partnered with water

engineer Simcha Blass in 1965 to develop and mass-produce drip irrigation.

Netafim, the kibbutz’s irrigation business, now controls a large portion of the

drip market, with $400 million in sales last year. Manager Naty Barak checks

the kibbutz drip lines, which feed corn, cotton and tomato crops in an area that

receives less than 8 inches of rain annually. Alexandra Boulat

32 Blue Planet Run Drinking Dinosaur Water 33

lawsuits and negotiations over water in the U.S. southeast, new residents of Atlanta may one day

soon turn on the tap to find it empty, southern Georgia farmlands could become permanently

parched, or economic growth in Florida and Alabama could be significantly stunted.

While the global water crisis is growing ever more dangerous, there are nonetheless a few potential

winners — namely, those nations or individuals who have a surfeit of the precious commodity or

who develop new ways to produce and distribute it. With a population of only 30 million and vast

amounts of territory containing more than 20 percent of the world’s fresh water, Canada stands

to become the leader of an OPEC-like cartel as water takes its place next to oil as a depleted

essential resource. To ship this water from Canada, as well as places like Russia, Greenland and

the northern reaches of China, barges with massive liquid-holding bladders and streamlined piping

systems for bulk water transfers are already on the drawing boards, while new, less expensive and

more efficient desalination techniques to make saltwater fresh are close to completion. All of these

inventions and new ones beyond our imagination will become more and more economical — and

perhaps temper the water disputes — as the supply of water continues to diminish and the price

of water inexorably rises.

Other solutions that could minimize the inevitable water wars require viewing water in a different

light — that is, as a shared resource that demands global cooperation to manage correctly. To

that end, international funding agencies like the World Bank should use their financial leverage

to direct that water development projects be initiated solely under regional umbrellas, jointly

controlled by all of the nations in the area. And water mediation groups, such as Green Cross

International, founded by former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev, should be backed by

a United Nations mandate to fulfill the charter of, as GCI describes it, “preventing and resolving

conflicts arising from environmental degradation.”

None of this will be easy. Ultimately, conflict is less difficult than cooperation. But we really have

no choice: The way we respond to the water crisis will determine whether we survive.

– JEFFREY ROTHFEDER

ARMED MEMBERS of the rebel group MEND (Movement for

Emancipation of the Niger Delta) have destroyed oil facilities and forced the

closure of a significant percentage of the area’s oil operations. They have

turned to violence to protest the pollution of their country’s waterways

and alleged degradation of the natural environment by foreign multinational

corporations. On May 1, 2007 MEND caused Chevron to shut down

some oil production when it reportedly attacked the company’s Oloibiri

floating production, storage and offloading vessel off southern Bayelsa state.

Michael Kamber

S WITH A POPULATION of 18 million growing by almost 400,000 every year, the water needs of

the residents of Mumbai, India, are staggering. Because water is prohibitively expensive, many slum

dwellers rely on leaks found — or created — in the massive pipelines that carry water to more affluent

neighborhoods. Mumbai’s have-nots avoid the garbage and human waste surrounding their dwellings by

walking on top of the pipelines. Around the world, losses of fresh water due to leakage are routinely

reported as high as 70 percent in some major cities. Christopher Brown, Redux

1.1 billionThe number of people worldwide — 1 in every 6 — without access to clean water

CREATED BY RICK SMOLAN

AND JENNIfER ERwITT

BL

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Blue Planet Run provides readers with an extraor-dinary look at the water problems facing humanity and some of the hopeful solutions being pursued by large and small companies, by entrepreneurs and activists, and by nongovernmental organizations and foundations. By the end of the book, readers are left to form their own conclusions as to whether the human race is capable of taking the steps necessary to solve this global crisis before it’s too late.

Blue Planet Run is actually two books in one: the first is about an inspiring 15,000-mile relay race— the longest relay race in human history—in which 20 athletes spent 95 days running around the globe to spread awareness of the global water crisis.

The second is a showcase of powerful, inspiring, disturbing and hopeful images captured by leading photojournalists around the world who documented the human face of the crisis and its possible solutions. The result of these two parallel projects is the book you hold in your hands.

In addition to the world class photographs, this book includes insightful essays from a passionate group of writers, environmentalists, inventors and journalists including Robert Redford, Diane Ackerman, Fred Pearce, Bill McKibben, Jeffrey Rothfeder, Michael Specter, Dean Kamen, Michael Malone, Paul Hawken, and Mike Cerre.

One hundred percent of the royalties from this book will be used to provide clean drinking water to people around the world who desperately need it.

www.BLUEPLANETRUN.ORG

Published by Earth Aware Editions17 Paul DriveSan Rafael, CA 94903800.688.2218Fax: 415.526.1394www.earthawareeditions.com

Against All OddsPO Box 1189Sausalito, CA 94966-1189www.againstallodds.com

Blue Planet Runwww.blueplanetrun.org

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Rick Smolan is a former Time, Life and National Geographic photographer best known as the creator of the Day in the Life book series. He and his partner, Jennifer Erwitt, are the principals of Against All Odds Productions, based in Sausalito, California. Fortune Magazine featured Against All Odds as “One of the 25 Coolest Companies in America.” Their global photography projects combine creative storytelling with state-of-the-art technology. Many of their books have appeared on the New York Times best-seller lists and have been featured on the covers of Time, Newsweek and Fortune. Their books include America 24/7, One Digital Day, 24 Hours in Cyberspace, Passage to Vietnam, The Power to Heal and From Alice to Ocean. They live with their two children, Phoebe and Jesse, in Northern California.

Cover image: Robert Randall

US Price $45.00ENVIRONMENT/PHOTOGRAPHY

9 7 8 1 6 0 1 0 9 0 1 7 1

5 4 5 0 0

US $45.00ISBN-13: 978-1-60109-017-1ISBN: 1-60109-017-X

It is estimated that one billion people across the planet now lack access to clean water. But, as the extraordinary images on the following pages show, there are solutions to the world’s fresh water crisis, and they are within reach. This book, ostensibly about a world crisis, is also a work of optimism and hope.

The Blue Planet Run volume you are holding in your hands represents two extraordinary projects. The first is the result of a worldwide search for images and stories to capture the human face of the global water crisis. For one month, 40 talented photojournalists crossed the globe taking photographs to show the extent of the problem. At the same time, a team of researchers contacted photographers on every continent to identify existing bodies of work focused on this crucial issue. Simultaneously, 20 runners representing 13 nationalities embarked on a 95-day nonstop relay race around the globe, serving as messengers to raise awareness of the severity of the water crisis.

The Blue Planet Run is designed to be a wake-up call to the world, sounding both a warning and a note of hope, letting us know that there is still time to solve this problem if we act now, before it is too late.

The book also features insightful original essays from an extraordinary range of noted writers, environmentalists, inventors and journalists which include Robert Redford, Diane Ackerman,

Fred Pearce, Bill McKibben, Jeffrey Rothfeder, Michael Specter, Dean Kamen, Michael Malone, Paul Hawken and Mike Cerre.

In keeping with the theme of the book, two trees will be planted for each tree used in the production of this book and 100% of all royalties will fund safe drinking water projects. For more information on how you can help, visit www.BluePlanetRun.org

CONTINUED ON BACK FLAP

CONTINUED FROM FRONT FLAP

p. 1 ... BASICSp. 3 .... IMPACTp. 4 .... HEALTHp. 5 .... WATER CONFLICTSp. 6 .... SOLUTIONSp. 7 .... PEER WATER EXCHANGEp. 8 .... THE BLUE PLANET RUN 2007

INFOGRAPHICS : THE WORLD’S WATERby Nigel Holmes

32 Blue Planet Run Drinking Dinosaur Water 33

50 Blue Planet Run Poisoning the Well 51

Water: the new oil 141140 Blue Planet Run

174 Blue Planet run A Billion slingshots 175

236 Blue Planet Run Blue Planet Run 237