Lars Hopman
A Quiet Revolution
produced by Earth Council, is a short documentary outlining the
importance of water in our world and what certain individuals are
doing to help maintain it. There are three cases presented each
looking at a different point of water conservation. The first is
rainwater harvesting in rural India, second is water pollution in
Slovakia, and reforestation in Kenya which helps the rain soak into
the earth and allow for fertile earth.
The
film does show some great points for designing for water management
for the 90%. The first is how important water is to the economy.
The first case outlines this clearly, the village, which went from
having not enough food for themselves, to having excess to sell,
after sorting their water shortage.
Next,
solutions must be affordable and upkeep-able by the people who are
using it. As most of people in these examples are low income
villages they cannot afford to pay for powering massive water pump
that runs on petrol or uses power as most of them do not even have
power lines to their village.
Lastly,
sometimes rather than looking at what we have now we should look back
at what was used before to manage water and improve those designs,
especially when designing for low or nil energy cost.
The
documentary main aim is to show how little governments are doing to
solve these problems and how individuals have to step and do it
themselves. The documentary does this by emphasizing the problems
dramatically, help along by narration from Meryl Streep. This leads
to questioning if the problems are really that bad, but with the
interviews with experts, most of whom work for the UN or are Nobel
Prize winners it does lend validity to their argument. Also helping
is quoting that the united governments of the world spend ten times
the amount of money on military than the required amount for water
management which is not yet being met.
As
a designer watching this documentary we should see an opportunity to
help our world, not for finical gain now but for the economy it will
build in the future allowing for further design opportunity and
possible greater gain in the future.
Reference
SGIVideosOnline (2007,
May 29). A Quiet Revolution [Video file]. Retrieved from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfB0doRI_dc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HveMaSP6TZw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feW_NxpCnCo
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