Puja, ceremony of honoring the sacred, as seen in “Durga Puja” by Sevak Ram, 1809. Image: British Library Add.Or. 29

Jalwa Puja is a water ceremony, sacred to India, in which mothers welcome a new child with blessings at the village well. Baghwati Argrawal incorporated this and other customs, including naming reservoirs after community leaders, in the Rajastan project that collects and distributes rainwater. Argrawal calls the program, administered by Sustainable Innovations,  Aakash Ganga or River from the Sky. The system collects monsoon rains, channeling potential floods into treasured reservoirs. A rain collection system also irrigates gardens of the Taj Mahal. But what of areas where there is scarce percipitation? Will Graciela Schneier-Madanes and the University of Arizona’s Institute of the Environment, as presented at Fulbright Water Act 2015, guide the world’s dry regions? Can the University of Massachusetts Boston’s School for the Environment open a new vision? Most arid country on earth, Australia changed agriculture and irrigation while providing electricity via Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric. As UN Climate Change conference COP21 concludes, how can we sustain shared resources including water?

Kathleen Toner, CNN. “‘River from the Sky’ brings life-changing water.” 7 December 2015.

Building the World Blog by Kathleen Lusk Brooke and Zoe G Quinn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License