Women Leading the Future

Today is the day people with blogs from all over the world are focusing on the environment. I want to tell everyone about this exciting initiative of the women of Victoria in Australia on water reform.

In 1992 the Dublin Water and the Environment Conference identified four principles that have come to be known as the Dublin principles. The first states that "water is a finite, vulnerable and essential resource that should be managed in an integrated manner." The third states that "women play a central role in the provision, management and safeguarding of water."

We have only in recent years become aware of the first principle in Australia and it has been the Victorian Women's Trust, here in Victoria and its Watermark project that has activated the third principle. It provided the leadership and inspiration and developed a grass-roots, community based initiative, bringing together more than two thousand ordinary women in groups. It provided them with innovative learning materials about water and supported their education about water reform. Not only that, the private donors who financially made the whole project possible were also women. The project that began in 2000 presented its report - Our Watermark : Australians Making a Difference in Water Reform - in July this year.

We are in crisis with water in Australia and it is not just about drought. It's about recognising that water is a finite resource and we need to begin valuing it and using it wisely. We have always taken water for granted. We are one of the highest per capita water users on earth. Even with the efficiencies we have made in recent years, the amount of water we use in our homes and on our gardens is, for example, twice as much as that used domestically in homes in Denmark. We now need to learn how to use our water much more efficiently. We also need to develop a new relationship with water. Women can be at the forefront of making that happen.

This profoundly challenging and inspirational report which has emerged from the reflections and actions of primarily the women of Victoria provides everything we need to commence that process. Its primary aim has been to raise the level of water literacy in the community by providing people with "a credible and accessible source of information about water." As well as information about the big picture on water, it provides information for what every sector of society can do - households, dry land farmers, irrigators, businesses and organisations, rural lifestyle landholders and governments. It highlights 20 principles to guide water reform, and asks us to recognise our power to act on them and bring about change.

So the report is only the beginning. The Victorian Women's Trust hopes people will get the report, read it and get together in groups and study it and be a force for change and reform around water into the future.

Funding from donors has seen the first print of 12,000 copies distributed free of charge because the Trust wants there to be no barriers to people accessing this report. It can be mailed here in Australia at a cost of $10.00 for postage and handling. In Melbourne, Victoria, it can be picked up free from Readings Bookstores in Carlton and Hawthorn and from the Trust offices, First Floor, 388 Bourke Street.

Further details can be obtained at www.watermarkaustralia.org.au or phone: 03 9642 0422 or email: women@vwt.org.au