Our goal: a ripple effect

Blue Planet Links Foundation's objective is to promote healthy water: safe drinking water for everyone, and oceans, rivers and lakes with thriving ecosystems.

We want to connect people to more people, who together will have the power to change what is happening to the world's water.

Because...

Blue Planet Links people grew up in a coastal city bordered by mountains, with beaches where we swam in clear waters. We boasted that our drinking water was the best in the world – you couldn't taste it. Just outside the city, we counted the fish boats anchored at sunset (the record was 112). An annual sport fishing derby drew thousands of participants.

Today, the same beaches have been closed a few times because of high coliform counts, and tankers usually ride at anchor in the bay. Chlorine scents the drinking water. A dozen fish boats appear, but that's over the whole summer. The fish have gone. So has the derby.

Yet, in terms of water, this is still one of the luckiest places in the world. We've been in Mediterranean bays where raw sewage pours in alongside houses.  We've seen Asian fields where water brings rats, and rats bring on rat poison, and people with no choice eat the rats and use the water polluted by rats and poison. We know places where rivers dry up, people die of thirst, then survivors are hit by floods.

Major forces seem to be at work to degrade world water resources. We need oil, oil needs water: 4 gallons of it to extract each gallon of oil; that dirty water usually gets sent back into the groundwater system. Humans pour untold tonnes of CO₂ into the air, and about one-third of it gets absorbed by oceans, acidifying them to the detriment of all sealife. Climate change is also raising ocean temperatures, melting ice flelds, and bringing weather extremes that put safe water sources at risk. Pollution -  from fertilizer to ship effluent to plastics to medications we have consumed - works its way into rivers and oceans, harming fish and animals right up the food chain, making people sick and affecting places we play.  Yet we walk around drinking plastic-bottled water and seeming to accept the changes as a done deal.

As “water for life” is becoming endangered everywhere, we decided to start shouting about it - trying to make more people aware, energized and maybe even agitated enough to do something.

And because...

Some things give us hope of a sea change. Because of teachers, first-graders tell their parents to turn off the tap while brushing. Prompted by public opinion, some nations have legislated higher environmental standards. Golf courses have been converted from profligate water users to closed-system recyclers. New water technology has sped disaster relief.  And even resource extractors are spending real r&d money to find ways to reduce water pollution and usage.

So, please:

Dive in, follow a few Blue Planet Links. Some are fun, some are sobering.

Use water carefully. Keep it clean. Teach the children. Think about acting locally and globally, because everyone needs healthy water, everywhere.