Brave Blue World - A Netflix Documentary


The new Netflix documentary "Brave Blue World - Racing to Solve our Water Crisis" explores the innovating technologies and sciences that have the potential to help solving the world's water crisis. It focuses its story line on multiple countries across Africa and discusses the innovative ways to provide safe water and sanitation facilities to the global population in a changing world. There is an emphasis on how environmental change is altering the way people access clean freshwater and many of the case studies discussed are in African nations. 

The documentary aims to make the viewers question their beliefs on fresh water access by asking questions such as: is water a global issues? Is water a scarce resources? Is technology the solution to accessing clean water? The production team visited sites across the world and met with pioneers that are employing original techniques to solve water issues within their communities. 

Beth Koigi, the founder of Majik Water spend her university years having to buy dirty and
contaminated water in Kenya. As a way to fight this issue she used her innovative way of thinking and took inspiration from nature to create a water filtration devices that harvest water from the atmosphere. She began selling her filtration systems to villages in Kenya but is increasingly coming across areas of Kenya with no regular fresh water source, dried up rivers and decreasing water tables due to the changing climate. There is X6 more water in the atmosphere than in rivers and her vision is that as long as you have air you can have drinking water.


The documentary focuses on innovations with participatory solutions in order to get communities involved in solving their water crisis. This is a key factor in large scale change as people play a role in improving their lives through access to clean water and sanitation facilities. The conclusion is that countries whose governments were forward-thinking with "water innovation, investments and technology adoption" were seen to have higher levels of public participation and awareness of water resources and wastewater treatment. 

While the documentary discusses interesting technological advances in various communities worldwide, it fails to consider that the current freshwater crisis is less about a lack of global resources but rather about a lack of equal distribution and access. Beth Koigi saw the atmosphere as a untapped resources and utilised this to better her community however, the film focused a little too much on emphasising how technology and awareness can help balance a lack of resources rather than examining ways to reduce inequalities within access and distribution. 


Cover picture courtesy of: https://www.braveblue.world/vision

Text picture courtesy of: http://www.majikwater.co/

Comments

  1. Sana Ahmed9 November 2020 at 12:05

    This documentary looks really good, I will defiantly have a watch of it! I am curious to know if they mentioned methods they have used to increase awareness and public participation? I was also wondering how they could have focused more on the inequalities of distribution and access when linking it to technology?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kerry11 November 2020 at 07:21

    I agree with Sana, it does look good! I really like that you have picked up on a pertinent topic and deconstructed some of the key issues. To bring out your commentary and 'voice' more, you could perhaps think about using examples (such as the documentary) this to help you make your point/argument. In other words, it is important to focus on environmental change and access to clean freshwater and the documentary helps to show how important the link is. Therefore, instead of discussing other authors words and what was said in the documentary, you could also use it to show the pertinence of what you think is an important issue.

    (GEOG0036 PGTA)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Introduction

Image
Cover image courtesy of: NCM In this blog, my aim will be to explore the relationship between water and environmental change on the African continent.  The focus of this blog will be about how deforestation and land use change is affecting the hydrological cycle in the world with a direct focus on Africa and the Congo Basin. Moreover the relationship between water and Africa will be explored on a large scale to understand why water has always been an issue in Africa and highlight how the changing environment is deepening these issues.  The reason I want to explore this subject of environmental change and water is that "Water is the primary medium through which people in Africa will experience climate change impacts" ( Taylor, 2001:1 ). Through this, my blog will dive into issues such as how deforestation affects the global hydrological cycle, land use change and extreme weather events to further understand how water is linked to economic, social and political issues in Africa...
Read more

Impacts of the Congo basin deforestation on the African monsoon patterns

Image
The Congo Basin is located in Central Africa spanning across six countries. It is one of the three main rainforests worldwide and plays a key role in regulating monsoon patterns across much of Africa. There are about 10,000 species of tropical plants in the Congo Basin and approximately 30% are endemic to the area. Additionally many endangered animals call the Congo home from mountain gorilla, chimpanzees and forest elephants. The Congo rainforest has been inhabited by humans for over 50,000 years and is key to providing them with shelter, food and freshwater. Increasing rates of deforestation is threatening this fragile ecosystem and not only is the biodiversity within under threat, but the entire hydrological cycle of Africa as well.  Picture courtesy of: Planet.com  representing the  Congo Basin in green The Congo basin is highly dependent on precipitation as there are few low intensity aquifers in the region to sustain farming and human activity. Much of the economic...
Read more