Happy International Women’s Day! Here are four videos featuring women doing inspiring work to bring cleaner water and sustainability to the world.
1. Professor Joan Rose, international expert in water microbiology, 2016 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate
“For me, what’s at the core of sustainability is water quality and water security. If we focus on that, we’re not only going to improve human health, we’re going to improve the bio-health of the planet, which means that influences food security, ecosystem services, and that is what true sustainability is.”
2. Sunita Narain, Director of the Centre for Science and Environment, winner of the 2005 Stockholm Water Prize
“We have in my view two key challenges. One, that we are living in an increasingly climate-risked world…. The second challenge is that we are living in an extremely inequitable world, a world where poverty and marginalization is growing. So what does sustainability mean for this world? How can we build sustainability if there is no inclusive growth?”
3. Barbara Evans, Professor of Public Health Engineering at the University of Leeds
“Sanitation is 85 percent operational business. The infrastructure investment is the easy part, and the real challenge is to support local authorities to invest in systems and services which they can actually afford to run, and then making sure that the money to run them, the management structure, regulations and incentives are in place.”
4. Eleanor Allen, CEO of Water For People
“25 percent of the world doesn’t have access to clean water. Over 33 percent doesn’t have access to a toilet. This is a global water and sanitation crisis. It affects billions of people in dire situations all over the world, men, women and children. However, it is mostly a women’s issue, because the greatest impact is on women…. There are three reasons why.”