It all boils down to water.
Clean water is the foundation for many of our functioning systems. It provides us with the ability to prepare meals for our families and allows our homes to have proper hygiene and sanitation channels. It gives life to our gardens and livestock, allowing our food systems to reach great lengths. Industries depend on it for production, transportation, and an array of unseen purposes. The planet’s ecosystems rely on its role to purge contaminants, carry nutrients, and sustain life.
Without clean water, many of our systems will collapse.
The focus of this website is to identify several key pillars that uphold sustainable, self-sufficient living, all of which are linked to clean water. These pillars are:
Understanding Water Crises
The global water crisis is projected to increase in severity in the coming years with water-stressed, developing regions feeling the brunt of it. Issues such as water conflict, water scarcity, groundwater depletion, and contamination continue to compound the growing problem. For those interested in maintaining a sustainable community, creating a strategy around the growing water crisis is a necessity.
Water Potability
The knowledge and means to purify water for potable use is the heart and soul of this website. We cover various different methods for water purification including carbon filtration, disinfection, distillation, ultraviolet purification, and reverse osmosis, as well as reviewing the different devices that facilitate these methods. We also cover, in detail, the many aspects of getting water from a well system.
Self-Sufficiency
The concept of self-sufficiency is an expansive one and covers a host of topics. At World Water Reserve we primarily concentrate on rainwater harvesting, aquaponics, vegetable gardening, and permaculture philosophy, all of which are tied to a clean supply of water.
Sustainability
The topic of sustainability can be very broad and is often times associated with large-scale operations within NGOs and some industries. For the purposes of this website, we’re addressing sustainability in the small-scale sense. Meaning, we’re interested in sustainable practices that small communities can implement in order to flourish independently. This can include anything from sustainable philosophies, energy-efficient devices such as solar panels or wind turbines, battery bank planning, and anything that can help a community live autonomously.
How it all started
I’ve always been concerned with the idea of clean water on both a micro level and a macro level.
On a micro level, in that, I’m deeply concerned with the quality of water that I and my loved ones consume. I’ve had my share of research and experimentation with water distillers, RO systems, portable carbon filters, best methods for fluoride removal, all to ensure that I’m consuming the purest water possible.
And on a macro level, in that, there are certain factors which are far beyond my control. Factors such as global water scarcity, groundwater depletion, the privatization of clean water sources, water conflicts across disputed boundaries, and the pollution and contamination of freshwater, are all very sobering when confronted with.
In the developed world, the idea of water scarcity doesn’t exactly come across as alarming since many of our needs are very immediately provided for by industry. But as I’ve gained a deeper understanding of the systems that keep our society afloat, I’ve come to understand that many of these systems are frighteningly fragile. And these systems are dependent on other systems, all of which are equally as fragile. In other words, it isn’t entirely delusional to consider that the perils which the developing world has grown accustomed to could never be experienced here at home.
Thus, with a basis rooted in water independence, my journey toward a more self-sufficient lifestyle began.
As I’ve researched topics on water and self-sufficiency on the micro level, I’ve come across many resources on off-grid living, rural gardening, well water management, rainwater harvesting, etc. But most of these sources focus solely on the prep-minded, personal aspect of self-sufficiency. Meaning, the larger, environmental, economic, and global aspects are often ignored.
As I’ve researched topics on water scarcity on the macro level, most of the resources available address important global issues but are often too broad and too complex to have any practical use for someone concerned with merely living a simple, self-sustained life.
And that’s where this website comes in.
I wanted to provide a resource that addresses small-scale, self-sufficient living for individuals and small communities, but that also addresses how to prepare for larger, global concerns such as water scarcity, societal and economic unrest, natural disasters, climate irregularities, and other uncontrolled factors that may disrupt our already fragile systems.
This website isn’t partisan, nor is it interested in activism. It’s a resource for a small community looking to install rainwater harvesting systems, it’s a resource for the family in the suburbs looking to move off-grid, and it’s a resource for the village in rural Kenya looking to install a solar power grid.
Knowledge is power and self-sufficiency is freedom.
Jeremiah Castelo - Editor