Water tops climate change as global priority

As the world turns its eyes toward Copenhagen for the United Nations Climate Conference in December and how to engage the public on these massively complex issues of planetary survival, it might look to water as a universal solvent. According to our new Circle of Blue GlobeScan public opinion survey, WaterViews, we now know that people globally care most about water.

This seems like commons sense. Water flows through each of world's most significant challenges of the 21st century, from drought and food supplies, health and pandemics to economic despair and sustainable development. And, of course, we'd simply die without water.

This comprehensive and independent global public opinion survey on attitudes about fresh water sustainability, management and conservation finds that people around the world view water issues as the planet’s top environmental problem, greater than air pollution, depletion of natural resources, loss of habitat and even climate change. We published the results Tuesday at World Water Week in Stockholm. (Circle of Blue is the independent, nonpartisan journalism, science and communications organization I direct that's reporting the global water crisis.) The data is fresh and we didn't know the outcome until the numbers were in little more than a week ago.

My colleague Keith Schneider writes:

The fierce impediments to clean water and sanitation, and the millions of premature deaths from water-related disease, are seen as having a greater influence on quality of life and the planet than air pollution, species extinction, depletion of natural resources, loss of habitat and climate change.

Opinion is powerful stuff, and it may be catching up to present-day reality. The encouraging news for those working on water issues is that people — a high 93 percent — want to be empowered with more information to do something about the crisis.

What does this mean? Simple. As an issue, climate is gravely urgent. But it's a surpassingly complicated story built on scenarios and slow fuses. If it can be broken down into its concrete impacts on such things as water, then it becomes understandable and real.

We surveyed 1,000 people in each of 15 countries, and probed 500 in each of the following countries on specific questions: Canada, China, India, Mexico, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. (We are awaiting data from ten more countries.) Water pollution and fresh water shortages ranked first and second while climate ranked sixth.

A closer look at the results shows that people around the world view water pollution as the most important facet of the fresh water crisis, and that shortages of fresh water are very close behind.

end of excerpt