Drinkable Rivers, in our lifetime!
When?
When you embrace a moonshot vision, patience and timing are everything. We launched the Drinkable Rivers meme launched in August last year, and now it has a timeframe.
Where?
Where best to start but in one’s own backyard, and this is mine . . .
This one is jumping out, begging to be done. We feel the time is right.
Let’s start with one river, the Avon River, and give ourselves 10 years to make it drinkable again. Once a lead project is underway, and the platforms created, other communities could emulate this, for less cost and with all the information and the experience from this project.
MEASURE
Gather the data. Everything that can be measured, should be measured, and if it’s measured it improves.
The monitoring equipment is here, that can remotely measure many of the most important indicators of water health.
Technology and data are core to achieving this goal, and that’s our unfair advantage and why we could even get there sooner.
SHARE DATA
Interpret and visualise the data in ways that anybody (a child) can understand, with good use of Infographics.
Share online (website, facebook, twitter, instagram), supported by printed media, radio and TV. Share it on flat screen displays in key locations along the river, perhaps on particularly large screens readable by passing foot and road traffic.
Engage with business, government and the people. Invite dialogue. What is the data telling us? What could we do organisationally, personally and collectively to influence it?
Online platform
If the people care, and we do, we can move mountains - and clean up rivers! We have the technology to go to Mars, so I’m sure we can clean up a river!
In Christchurch alone we can have four-hundred-thousand eyeballs on the data, and enquiring: Why has the quality improved? Why has it gone backwards? What impact did that recent initiative have? What can we do to improve this more?
ACTION
Design a platform that facilitates collaborative action, in streams of related tasks. Develop guides for what-you-can-do and how.
We have the technology to repair water: Living Machines and BioMatrixWater.
DO SOMETHING / ANYTHING
If you can imagine, and desire Drinkable Rivers in your lifetime, and would love to contribute and co-create with us, drop us a note with your thoughts, and we’ll reply with a link to our more detailed game plan.