"Hello there everybodeeeee!"

The World Banking Group partner with Sesame Street to educate children about WASH.

Tweeting about the importance of clean water, sanitation and hygiene comes somewhat easily to Big Bird.

I found this video around the time of the Global Citizens Festival in September and thought my blog would be the perfect place to share it. It came as quite a shock to me that nearly a third of the world's population still do not have access to toilets. Nevertheless the WBG highlights the great work organisations such as WaterAid have been doing to tackle this issue.

Whether these furry creatures will have a great impact on the masses is a different matter. However the little child within me hopes that this could be a step in the right direction to educating the next generation of climate enthusiasts.

A battle to be won?

The climate crisis is posing a great threat on water security for millions of people and every year more devastating events seem to be occurring. In my first post I touched on a popular news story which seems to be grabbing the headlines in 2015- The Worst El Niño in 15 Years? Natural Phenomena like this are increasing in intensity and frequency, but how are we supposed to prepare for such events in a changing climate?

“Water is the matrix of culture, the basis of life”

It is thanks to Vandana Shiva, author of Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit that inspired this blog which focuses on such a fundamental aspect of all life on Earth. In the coming months I plan to explore what it means to be water secure in the current climate and the environmental, social and political impacts it is having on various communities around the world.

Water security is a very broad topic, but some of the key aspects for me is the impact Climate Change is having on food supplies and WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene). I believe that this plays an important part in international development, health and education.

Millions of people are fighting this war every day; it is not just in those countries stricken with poverty which are being effected. It would be in the world’s best interest to find a solution to the problem- if it is not already too late. 

Source: A climate deniers approach to worldly issues? 

The Worst El Niño in 15 Years?

The Southern Oscillation event is likely to be the strongest since 1997-98 claims a new update from the World Meteorological Organisation.

Children at Algi Village in Papua New Guinea could experience some of the worst droughts in almost 20 years. Photograph: AAP/Care 

A recent report from Oxfam outlines the devastating impacts of this on the water cycle. 4.5 million people in Ethiopia are already in need of food aid due to successive drought periods over the last year. In addition to this, countries such as Zimbabwe have seen a 35% decrease in their maize harvest period. This is predicted to impact up to 1.5 million people by early 2016. Unfortunately, it has been reported that 24 people have already died of starvation in Papua New Guinea due to droughts in the Highlands region.

Could this have been prevented?

Oxfam suggests that meteorologists and international agencies have provided sufficient warning of El Niño and that if governments had been better prepared, then international emergencies like this could be avoided. Compared to 15 years ago, we are more prepared to deal with these disasters, however with a changing climate it is proving difficult to determine the true extent of such events. Director of the World Meteorological Organisation, David Carlson, explains how the recent changes in the climate system makes El Niño difficult to understand:

“We have had years of record Arctic sea ice minimum. We have lost a massive area of northern hemisphere snow cover, probably by more than 1 million square kilometres in the past 15 years. We are working on a different planet and we fully do not understand the new patterns emerging."

With Paris on the horizon, it will be interesting to see how countries commit to tackling such uncertainties.