Once a tourist attraction, Lake Togo languishes surrounded by sewage outfalls and tons of waste. The short film Trash Lagoon, finalist at the We Art Water Film Festival 5, shows the damage caused by water pollution to fishermen. It is yet another example of how the loss of biodiversity throws a society off balance and how any solution against poverty requires the achievement of universal sanitation.

The increase in torrential rains expected with climate change increases the risks of flooding almost everywhere in the world. 587 million poor people are the most defenseless and find it much more difficult to recover from a disaster. Among them, 132 million live below the extreme poverty line (USD 1.9 per day). They are the most vulnerable to a disaster caused by rainfall and poor land management.

Water is the main resilience factor to face climate change. The experts gathered in Stockholm state that urgent action is needed and establish the roadmap for the next COP 26 in Glasgow.

The Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC/AR 6, presented last August by the IPCC, has coincided with a whirlwind of extreme weather events that have sown the planet with disasters. Billions of people have experienced the reality of climate change and its seriousness. It is urgent to move from concern to action.

The short film Lágrimas de la Tierra (Tears of the Earth) by the Mexican David Ballesteros won the audience award at the fifth edition of the We Art Water Film Festival. It is a document on the unspeakable human damage caused by toxic discharges into the water. Governments and companies are obliged to control them and citizens must denounce them and claim their rights. The awareness of young people is the great hope, in Mexico and all around the world.  

The destruction of the Tanjaro River ecosystem shows that all is lost when water is polluted. Its recovery is also becoming an example of the difficulties of governance in a country that has not recovered from several wars. The short film Tanjaro is Dying, finalist of the We Art Water Film Festival 5, shows the disastrous consequences of the uncontrolled growth of a city in a region that has almost no memory of peace.

Africa’s largest island is facing a serious humanitarian emergency. Drought and sand storms have unleashed one of the worst food crises in the history of a country with endemic deficiencies in water infrastructures and with a governance that is incapable of adequately managing the territory. The short film Where to go?, finalist at the We Art Water Film Festival 5, provides direct evidence of a crisis that threatens to kill more than a million people.  

The more we know about environmental problems, the more global solutions become. The water footprint of economic activity is closely linked to the carbon footprint, and both have an impact on the ecological footprint. The goal of reducing greenhouse gases should take hydric stress into consideration in a global approach that is essential to achieve efficiency and justice.