Around the world, humans and other living creatures are facing the consequences of reckless exploitation of water.

Just a few facts:

• UNESCO states that more than one billion people currently lack access to a continuous supply of clean water. Some of these people, a large proportion of whom are women, must spend hours each day just carrying water from its source to their home.
  
• More than a third of the world's population--2.4 billion people - don't have access to proper sanitation.
  
• Water-related diseases kill more than 5 million people each year, 10 times the number killed in wars. Approximately 2.3 billion people suffer from diseases linked to dirty water, and roughly 60 per cent of infant mortality worldwide is linked to infectious and parasitic diseases, most of them water-related.
  
• Riverine ecosystems are endangered virtually everywhere by non-sustainable development and misuse of limited freshwater resources.
  
• More than half of the world's major rivers are either heavily polluted and/or drying up in their lower reaches because of over-use, according to the World Commission on Water for the 21st Century.
  
• Water scarcity is growing and may become irreversible in the next few years. Causes include climate change, population growth, and pollution.
  
• The UN has declared 2003 to be the International Year of Freshwater to recognize and address the situation.

Catalysta.org has addressed the paramount importance of water by focusing on the crisis in its inaugural year. "Water is an issue that has escaped mass media attention and popular understanding; water is positioned as humanity's most pressing 21st century concern. After over a century of mismanagement and pollution, water supplies are becoming scarce. The Green Revolution that served to feed a burgeoning human population of billions has reached its apex, and the world's political and business leaders are finalizing the privatization of the planet's resources."

Privatization is a vexed question because one of the outcomes has tended to be an increased cost of water to the consumer, which has in some cases made water too expensive for the poorest people to afford and led to significant loss of water quality. In countries such as South Africa, England, Bolivia, and the United States this has been the case. Yet the World Bank has mandated privatization as part of its loan policy. A press statement dated September 25, 2002, from Public Citizen reads: "The World Bank has engaged in a multi-pronged effort to promote a water policy that benefits large multinational corporations at the expense of poor people in developing countries." It is critical that the American people become aware of these issues, so that they can make informed choices and encourage their leaders to do so.

Together, we hope to explore what some of the solutions are.