Ready for Water Day & Earth Day?

By Marybeth Gardam, Corporations v Democracy Issue Committee Chair

The interconnectedness of water with resource conflicts and war is becoming better understood among activists, but we need to keep raising this in our communities. Water has also become a hot-button issue that spotlights economic injustice, as in Flint, Michigan, and states where fracking, coal slag, and nuclear plant leaks endanger water in the poorest neighborhoods. 

With World Water Day on March 22, and Earth Day on April 22, WILPF Branches have an opportunity to lift up these timely issues in their own local communities. They are issues that dramatically connect the global and the local. Our responses should also make that connection.

Branches and at-large members are encouraged to plan events that can raise the intersections of water, climate, environmental threats, resource shortages of food and water -- all of which connect to the Roots of War -- and for which the poorest and least powerful bear the most burden. Women are particularly affected by this intersection, this “perfect storm” of situations.  So are Native Americans, Tribal Nations and people of color. Invite them to be part of your organizing. Or consider joining with local allies among these groups to strengthen and support their planned events for World Water Day and Earth Day.  

WILPF’s new CLIMATE JUSTICE+WOMEN+PEACE Project Infographic Cards make good arguments for the interconnectedness of these issues and can be effective for educating and organizing locally. Use them at lobbying visits during Feb. 14-21 when members of Congress will be in recess and at home in their districts.  Leave the cards behind as you point out the connections between these issues and their impact on endless war, extreme weather events, food and water shortages, immigration, refugee crises, human trafficking, and environmental degradation.  Bring along others who are most affected in your state, and make your case strongly. Be sure to ask them to vote NO on the TPP in February/March. This trade agreement threatens to exacerbate each one of these problems.

The FREE Infographic Cards are the first part of a four-part project that will also provide study guides, candidate talking points, fact sheets and a presentation kit. The cards are available now and 21 branches are already using them to raise WILPF’s visibility in climate, TPP, and food security work.  

The study guides and other materials will be completed and posted on our website by March 31.  Order the Infographic cards at mbgardam@gmail.com. They are going fast, but we hope to reorder soon. The CLIMATE JUSTICE+WOMEN+PEACE Project is a collaboration of our Earth Democracy, DISARM, Advancing Human Rights and Corporations v Democracy Issue Committees and was funded by a WILPF-US minigrant. Branches pay only for mailing costs

See more coverage of World Water Day.