Yes, we have a mission and a plan!

We finally sat down and hammered out the official mission for Adapting to Scarcity.  It’s been guiding us since the beginning – it just took us some time to put into words.

Our mission is to empower and connect communities adapting to water scarcity.  By providing technical infrastructure to leverage social media, we facilitate participatory, grassroots organizing within and between local communities on a global scale.

Our mission is to empower and connect communities adapting to water scarcity.  With digital and internet-based social media tools, we aim to help these communities share their knowledge and experiences.  We believe that this global grassroots information sharing will help strengthen and build movements adapting to water scarcity worldwide. [Updated 21 November, 2009]

Furthermore, we’ve laid out our objectives for the next 6-9 months in Gudalajara, Mexico:

1.  Make a documentary for IMDEC (Instituto Mexicano para el Desarrollo Comunitario) to strengthen the local movements struggling to adapt to water scarcity.  Using 6 (or more!) FlipVideo cameras as well as a high definition video camera, the documentary will be filmed in part by participants in these local movements as well as ourselves.  Topics to be covered/goals include:

• Popular education efforts by IMDEC (eg environmental education and photography project by children)
• Efforts by IMDEC to facilitate the organizing capacity of local communities
• Raise awareness about contamination levels in the local watershed
  • Rio Santiago, which flows through the greater Guadalajara area, is one of the most polluted rivers in the world
  • All of Guadalajara’s untreated effluent (human and industrial) flows into this river.
  • Factories, under the protection of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), are dumping their waste into the river.
• Raise awareness about and share solutions and alternatives

2.  Create a web-based media library to connect local movements adapting to water scarcity around the world and to facilitate global knowledge sharing.

• The initial media for the site will be generated by those participating in filming the documentary as well as footage from our friends in GroundwaterUp project in New Delhi, India
• People from around the world will be able to easily upload, edit and share their own media clips through the site using already existing, open source software/technology
• Users and communities will be able to organize locally and globally through the site (specifics TBD)
• Ideally, media uploaded to the site will focus on strategies, solutions and failures movements worldwide.  This will help prevent communities from reinventing the wheel and allow relevant solutions to be implemented where they’re needed most.

As an organization with the intent of serving local communities, we expect these objectives to be as dynamic as the communities we’ll be working with in and around Guadalajara.  And of course, we are open to your thoughts, comments and questions!

Blogging for Climate Change

We’re blogging for climate change today as part of Blog Action Day and are one of 9,913 blogs in 151 countries with 13,102,696 readers.

The inspiration for the name of our project Adapting to Scarcity came from a conference on climate change I attended a few years ago.   One of the speakers described how important it is to begin adaptively managing our resources, for example as the water cycle is altered and vegetation zones move north with climate change.

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Trickle Down, Groundwater Up

Trickle Down, Groundwater Up is a documentary film project our friends Moriah, Katie and Tarini are launching in New Delhi, India.  To quote their website, the forthcoming film:

explores the challenges of consuming and accessing water in New Delhi, India. These challenges are examples of the social and ecological impacts of globalization [. . .] It also tell the stories of people who are working from the groundwater up to reclaim access to the most vital natural resource, and, in turn, to regenerate their ecosystems and communities.

Check out the work they are doing, and prepare to be impressed and inspired.

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