THE GLOBAL WATER PROJECT

There is a growing awareness that the world is entering an era of a water crisis of global dimensions. From a war for water over the corporate take-over of water resources in Bolivia to fighting the displacement of tribal people by large dams in India local water issues are beginning to have global implications. The inspiration for this project came during the summer of 2001 when Robert Dawson traveled with writer Jacques Leslie to follow activist Medha Patkar in her effort to stop the construction of the Sardar Sarovar dam on the sacred Narmada River in western India. Fifteen years after receiving a Goldman Environmental Prize, Medha is still struggling to improve the lives of thousands of tribal villagers who are being displaced by the dam. It became clear to Dawson that this epic battle over water was symbolic of other struggles being played out throughout much of the world. What these issues represent help define the critical water issues of the 21st century.

Without water, life as we know it ceases. We have the same amount of water on earth now as we did when our planet was new. We literally are a Water Planet. However, more than a billion people today do not have access to clean drinking water. Within the next ten years 40% of the worlds population will live in water-stressed countries. Future wars may be fought over water instead of oil. Armed conflicts have erupted over water in Californias Owens Valley in the 1920s and the Arab-Israeli war in 1967. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have come close to war over water disputes. And former U.N. Secretary-General Butros Boutros-Ghali said  the next war in our region will be over the waters of the Nile, not politics. In 2000, the populace of the third largest city in Bolivia rioted in the streets against police and soldiers over the privatization of their water. It was an ominous wake-up call from the people of Cochabamba. A recent United Nations report predicted rising demand for water is likely to threaten human and ecological health in many countries for generations to come.

In 1999, Dawson traveled to Vietnam and Cambodia to explore the site of one of the most divisive wars of his lifetime. After spending twenty years photographing water throughout the American West, Dawson used this trip to explore water in the broader international context of Southeast Asia. He began to understand that much of what he learned in the American West was relevant for much of the rest of the world as well. After his 2001 trip to India it became clear that the issue of water was global in scale and he then began his Global Water project. Dawson has made recent explorations of global water to Iceland during the summers of 2004 and 2005 where he photographed the struggle over the construction of a vast dam complex in the Central Highlands. In 2006 and 2007, Dawson has been examining where the oversubscribed Colorado River dries up in northern Mexico, battles over indigenous water rights along the Chixoy River in Guatemala and along the Klamath River in Northern California and water issues throughout South America.