About Changing Currents

Changing Currents aims to involve the public in the run-up to the 3rd World Water Forum in 2003. The interactive TV series is being broadcast in the 18 months leading up to the World Water Forum and then repeated in a special water 'month' on the BBC in February/March 2003. The series will engage viewers and Internet users in solutions to the global water challenges.

The way things are now it would seem that the world is running out of water. More than 1 billion people have no access to fresh drinking water and 2.4 billion have no sanitation. 6000 children die every day as a result - or one child every 15 seconds. But there is actually enough water for everyone - we're just not being very clever about it.

Changing Currents will challenge civil society, water managers, water users and those who govern the world's water resources to engage in the process of deciding how our scarce supplies of water will go round in the 21st century.

The first programme was broadcast in November 2001. Sink or Surf, reported on the 'Water Voice' project to collect grassroots opinions and comments. This was followed by Land of the Rising Water in June 2002, which looked at the history and current status of water management in Tokyo.

The third programme, Not a Dirty Word was also broadcast in June, and looked at sanitation and measures being taken around the world to improve both hygiene and rates of water consumption.

More Changing Currents programmes are in the pipeline. Pumping Pressure was broadcast in August and discussed the management of scarce water resources. Tell Tale Signs was broadcast on 16th September and looked at climate change and its implications for water resourses.

Changing Currents is a global interactive TV series exploring the world of water which:

• Aims to put POVERTY firmly on the maps of those who make decisions about water that ripple down to basic implications for survival for the poorest of the poor;
• Explores the challenges faced by governments and institutions on all levels in working out a way to achieve an affordable adequate water supply for all;
• Explores the challenges faced by those who endure the miseries caused by lack of adequate sanitation;
• Explores the challenges faced by civil society in making its voice heard in decisions taken about water.
• Explores the notion of sustainable water development for both food and the environment in the face of growing pressure and inequities;
• Explores the implications of the impacts of climate change for water managment - particularly for those who bear the brunt of environmental damage;
• Explores how water can be used as a tool for peace;
• Asks why water is not being recognised as an international human right;
• Explores the impacts the private sector might have on water delivery to the poor;
• Asks why people are so opposed to private sector involvement in water management and delivery;
• Asks how tough regulation can be achieved to ensure transparency and accountability in governance at all levels;
• Explores how the internet might become a tool for inclusion of those without a voice.

Despite all the talk of a "global water crisis", it is generally acknowledged by most experts that we do actually have the technology and the resources to guarantee fresh water supplies for everyone. The point is that we will have to be clever about it and we will have to do it together. Take food - there's plenty of food in the world - but millions are hungry - its not about how much there is but who can get access to it and how.

How we will equitably and efficiently manage the growing water demands for human, agricultural, environmental and industrial needs is at the heart of what has been called the new water paradigm.

Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is being promoted as the answer to the crisis.

For it to work requires a new holistic approach and an unprecedented level of political cooperation. For development to be sustainable it must be socially, economically and environmentally sustainable. Balancing competing social, economic and environmental interests and demands for water is an unavoidably political process. Rising to this challenge can bring a peace dividend.

But the world is a rich and diverse place both culturally and environmentally. Global problems have very local manifestations. Are the answers we are promoting the best answers for all? Water and the bodies through which it flows are symbolic as well as material resources, and beliefs about water are fundamental to people's understanding of the world. A major challenge that this series explores is how to make IWRM and the policies it promotes meaningful and politically credible in the diverse and highly complex contexts in which over-stretched Southern politicians operate, as well as to the two billion people living in poverty.

Convened by the World Water Council, and hosted by the Japanese Government, the Third World Water Forum in Kyoto will bring together the entire international water community - debates will cover all areas of water managment - delegate and ministerial declarations will take us one step further down the road of understanding as ideas are shared by an increasingly global community. Target agreements will be announced with great fanfare.

But while the officials fly from one conference to another - the people who populate the Changing Currents series will still be struggling to get access to water - the farmers from Gujarat, the community of Athol in South Africa, the untouchables in India, those living on the edge of Manila Bay, those struggling to survive in Orissa.... They will all be seeking and demanding solutions to the problems that make them poor.

Any viewer can become part of the process and contribute towards the debate - by joining the Virtual Water Forum or by contacting TVE.

While not underestimating the severity of the problem, TVE in the run-up to WWF3 will make it a priority to feature those with ideas - micro and macro - to meet the challenges. The village visionary, the inspired scientist, the policy-maker, the responsible entrepreneur - they will all populate our series as a river of voices.

The over-arching objective is for the privileged few who will attend the WWF3 to know that via Changing Currents there are many millions worldwide who will have had their expectations raised. Crucially, some of those viewers will have had an opportunity - via its interactive component - to know they had a role in deciding the agenda for WWF3.