Today is the 20th UN World Water Day – a chance to raise awareness of the role water plays in building better lives, and to reflect on the progress made over the last two decades, with over 2 billion people gaining access to clean water.

However, with 783 million people still having no choice but to rely on unsafe drinking water, we cannot stop there.

Every day, around 2,000 children die from diarrhoea caused by dirty water and poor sanitation. Time wasted being ill, as well as hours spent collecting water, keeps children out of school, and women from employment.

Improved water sources close to the home not only improve health, education and livelihoods; they can also be used to irrigate household kitchen gardens, while the bi-products of ecological sanitation can enhance soil fertility and crop yields.

Gaura Majhi, 43, is the chair of her community’s water and sanitation committee in Surkhet, Nepal, where WaterAid helped install a gravity-flow water system.

“Before the system was installed, we were always sick and I would waste hours each day collecting water. I had to collect water for my family only days after giving birth. Life was tough. Now we’re able to spend time on things like cultivation. It’s amazing to know my grandchildren are not going to suffer in the way my children and I did.”

Projects such as this also bring employment, with community members being trained to become masons, caretakers and hygiene facilitators to ensure sustainability. The wider impacts of safe water at a community level can then spread to improve water and food security on a national level.

Access to clean, safe water really does transform lives. You can see all the ways it can make a difference through a virtual journey to the village of Alakamisy, Madagascar in a new WaterAid multimedia piece.

This shows the change that can be made in one village, but we believe in water and sanitation for all. Today, WaterAid is launching a new report calling on governments to make a clear commitment to ensure that Everyone, Everywhere has safe water and sanitation by 2030.

The water and sanitation crisis has gone on too long – but we think that the end is in sight. After another 20 years of World Water Days, everyone in the world could have clean drinking water.

With world leaders currently debating what will replace the Millennium Development Goals in 2015, we have the opportunity to adopt a target to get water, sanitation and hygiene to everyone.

It won’t be easy. It will need governments, the private sector, civil society and communities to work together and be committed to see water and sanitation as a foundation for development. It will need more investment and better ways to spend water and sanitation budgets, but it can – and must – be done.

Let’s not let this opportunity slip through our fingers to get water to everyone by 2030.

Have a wonderful World Water Day!

How many little things can you think of that we can all do to make a difference to our world? Turning off the lights when you don’t need them? Turning down the central heating a few notches to save energy? It’s the little things we can all do, that collectively make a big difference to our world.

You’ll have read on this blog before, about how video is becoming more prevalent on mobile devices. Whether you’re an “E.T. Phone home” or a “Go ahead, make my day” kind of person, we all love films, and being able to enjoy them on our smart phones is great, but is your smart phone TRULY smart?

Well at WWF Wildlife Mobile, we think we’ve found a way to make your phone truly smart. We’ve come up with a way to generate money for charity without it costing you a penny or taking up any of your extra time. All you have to do is join the Wildlife Mobile community and pop one of our SIM cards into your mobile. Simply make the calls you normally make and every time you call your mum, your boss or Dave to pick up some fish and chips for tea on the way home, you’ll be generating money for WWF to help fund their conservation projects. So now there’s no need to put your coppers into the shaky tin!

The good thing about our network is not only that you’ll be doing your bit for nature, but you could be saving yourself some money too. Our PAYG standard rates are 30% cheaper than the major networks, and we also give you some free minutes to use when calling others on the WWF Wildlife Mobile network. A good reason to get your friends and family to join us too!

Our commitment is to operate with less profit, passing on money to the projects that need our help. All we ask is that you pop our SIM into your phone, copy over your contacts and talk, text, watch videos or play your favourite games, just as before. Now you can feel great about the fact that as you use your mobile, you are continually generating money to help us save our planet.

Now that is TRULY smart!

It’s quick, simple and free to switch, plus you can bring your existing number with you and our friendly call centre are on hand from 9am until 6pm daily if you need any help.

Once you switch, a ten minute call on WWF Wildlife Mobile could buy 6 saplings to help re-forest critically endangered Tiger habitats. So that call to Dave to ask him to pick up some dinner on his way home, could be good for you and great for Tigers!

What about call quality? We’ve partnered up with Vodafone, one of the largest network operators, to ensure you get great call quality and excellent network coverage of over 99%.

With WWF Wildlife Mobile you can relax, safe in the knowledge that you’re doing your bit for nature just by using your phone. Now that’s smart!

WWF Wildlife Mobile, Where Every Conversation Helps Conservation

Wind turbines set to blow the earth off orbit

Who knew wind could be so dangerous?

Matt Damon goes on strike to raise awareness of the need to protect water sanitation

A celeb who puts his weight behind the need to protect the planet’s resources.

George Bush on Global Warming – Spoof by Will Ferrell

An oldie but goodie.

The Story Of Change

A cute film with a serious message.

Symphony of Science – Our Biggest Challenge (Climate Change Music Video)

Singing scientists – what’s not to like?

Find out more about Climate Week.

What are your favourite climate movies? Let us know so we can feature them on Green.TV. It’s all about watching, engaging and taking action!

At a time when video production budgets are being squeezed ever tighter, often one of the first things to be compromised is the audio. Clients sometimes ask why they have to fork out for a sound recordist and kit when the job can be done by an intern waving a mic plugged straight into the camera. Or worse still, using the camera-top mic.

But neglect sound at your peril. Old-school directors are fond of the saying “Television without pictures is radio, but television without sound is crap”. Really good sound design can lift an otherwise mundane video – especially when no amount of “fixing it in post” can disguise the lack of decent shots.

A recent commission for us at Green.TV shows how important a great sound track can be. We were asked to create a 90″ video for the live launch event of a new organisation working on protecting the oceans. The brief was to take the audience on a journey from the dark ocean depths to the surface. Tricky to visualise when it’s pitch black down there – and funnily enough, the budget didn’t cover a Cousteau-style diving expedition. So we started by asking, what would it sound like? How would the ocean sounds change as you rose through the water column to the surface? And so the sound design became the starting point of the video, with the pictures playing an important, but secondary role. A day with the super-talented sound engineers at Felt Music produced a stunning sound track, to which we added stock footage.

For the launch event we hired in some kick-ass sub-woofers so the audience of around 250 could actually feel as well as hear the rumbles, hisses and drones of the deep ocean, and to give them an unforgettable experience.

Who says sound isn’t important?