In pictures: Every drop matters, it's World Water Day!

Posted by Angela Glienicke — 19 March 2015 at 6:12pm - Comments
All rights reserved. Credit: © Markus Mauthe / Greenpeace
Waterfall in Papua New Guinea

When you put the kettle on for your morning coffee, spare a minute to think about World Water Day. Water is essential to life, yet nearly 750 million people are without access to clean drinking water or improved sanitation.<--break->

Our archive images from places like China and Indonesia illustrate some of the challenges people face: industrial wastewater putting livelihoods as fishers under threat, and low groundwater levels making farming harder due to water consumption by the coal industry. But there are solutions to some of the problems. The photo of children in India having access to a water pump powered by solar energy is a positive example.

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Fisherman Pak Ade at work on the Citarum River. Citeureup Village, Kabupaten Bandung. Due to pollution, the number of fish has significantly declined in recent years.

© Andri Tambunan / Greenpeace 2013

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A farmer working in a rice field close to Ciawigede village. Greenpeace investigations have revealed the dumping of industrial wastewater containing a cocktail of toxic and hazardous chemicals, and caustic water, directly into the Citarum River, West Java.

© Andri Tambunan / Greenpeace 2013

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Industrial wastewater containing hazardous chemicals discharged into the Cihaur River, a tributary of the Citarum River. The government indicated the companies PT. Oriental and PT. SMM as responsible. Cipeundeuy Village, Kecamatan Padalarang regency.

© Andri Tambunan / Greenpeace 2013

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Dried up ponds after they have been used by the coal industry in Asam-asam Coal Mine in South Kalimantan.  Greenpeace is calling on the provincial and national government to stop the coal industry poisoning the water sources and local environment on which communities rely.

© Yudhi  Mahatma / Greenpeace 2014

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Greenpeace activists surround a pond in South Kalimantan with 'Caution: Toxic Water' tape at the Asam-asam Coal Mine.

© Yudhi  Mahatma / Greenpeace 2014

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Sheep graze on degraded grassland near the Baiyinhua No. 1 open-cast coal mine in West Ujimqin Banner of Xilin Gol, Inner Mongolia. Ten billion cubic meters of water will be consumed by 16 new coal fired power plants and mines in China in 2015, triggering severe water crises in the country's arid Northwest.

© Lu Guang / Greenpeace 2012

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Yang Yuanxiang, a farmer from Adaohai number 3 commune, next to a water well. He worries about how he will be farming the land if the groundwater levels continue to drop. Haolebaoji, Ordos, Inner Mongolia. For ten years, the Chinese state-run organisation Shenhua Group, has been exploiting water resources at a shocking scale from the Ordos grasslands to use in its coal-to-liquid project (a process for producing liquid fuel from coal) and illegally dumping toxic industrial waste water. 

© Qiu Bo / Greenpeace 2013

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The discharge form the Orville Qianyuan chemical plant steams on the surface of the Huangpu River.

© Lu Guang / Greenpeace 2014

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An aerial photo shows a massive seepage pit used to dispose of the toxic wastewater. The Datang Hexigten Qi plant is incapable of completely treating all of the wastewater it produces. Its only option is to store the large amount of industrial wastewater (highly concentrated salt water) in massive evaporation pools, such as this, which have turned into manmade lakes of wastewater.

© Greenpeace 2014

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A pontoon bridge across the Yellow River has become a shuffling train of coal between the Shizuishan Hebin Industrial Park in Ningxia and Wuhai in Inner Mongolia.

© Lu Guang / Greenpeace 2014

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Maidi Village, Jinzhong Town, Huize County. Longyi Tian, a 10-year old, is off from school for the Qingming Festival. He and his father were hired to irrigate Puqing Tang's field. After work, he had to go to a waterhole not far away from his home to collect water, since the water here is not clean and only can be used for cattle's drinking and feet washing.

© Lu Guang / Greenpeace 2010

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Children play with water as it gushes out of the solar powered pump at Bishunpur Tolla, Dharnai village. A solar-powered micro-grid is now supplying electricity to the village.

© Vivek M. / Greenpeace 2014

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A Greenpeace activist is getting thirsty during the Arctic Rising activity in Rome.

© Francesco Alesi / Greenpeace

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