title: Greta Thunberg

text: In August 2018, Thunberg began the school climate strikes and public speeches for which she has become an internationally recognized climate activist. In an interview with Amy Goodman from "Democracy Now!", she said she got the idea of a climate strike after school shootings in the United States in February 2018 led to several youths refusing to go back to school. These teen activists at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, went on to organize the March for Our Lives in support of greater gun control. In May 2018, Thunberg won a climate change essay competition held by Swedish newspaper "Svenska Dagbladet". In part, she wrote "I want to feel safe. How can I feel safe when I know we are in the greatest crisis in human history?"


title: Greta Thunberg

text: After the paper published her article, she was contacted by Bo Thorén from Fossil Free Dalsland, a group interested in doing something about climate change. Thunberg attended a few of their meetings. At one of them, Thorén suggested that school children could strike for climate change. Thunberg tried to persuade other young people to get involved but "no one was really interested", so eventually she decided to go ahead with the strike by herself.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: On 20 August 2018, Thunberg, who had just started ninth grade, decided not to attend school until the 2018 Swedish general election on 9 September; her protest began after the heat waves and wildfires during Sweden's hottest summer in at least 262 years. Her demands were that the Swedish government reduce carbon emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement, and she protested by sitting outside the Riksdag every day for three weeks during school hours with the sign "Skolstrejk för klimatet" (School strike for climate).


title: Greta Thunberg

text: Thunberg said her teachers were divided in their views about her missing class to make her point. She says: "As people, they think what I am doing is good, but as teachers, they say I should stop."


title: Greta Thunberg

text: After Thunberg posted a photo of her first strike day on Instagram and Twitter, other social media accounts quickly took up her cause. High-profile youth activists amplified her Instagram post, and on the second day she was joined by other activists. A representative of the Finnish bank Nordea quoted one of Thunberg's tweets to more than 200,000 followers. Thunberg's social media profile attracted local reporters whose stories earned international coverage in little more than a week.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: One Swedish climate-focused social media company was "We Don't Have Time" (WDHT), founded by Ingmar Rentzhog. He said her strike only began attracting public attention after he turned up with a freelance photographer and posted Thunberg's photograph on his Facebook page and Instagram account, and a video in English that he posted on the company's YouTube channel. Rentzhog subsequently asked Thunberg to become an unpaid youth advisor to WDHT. He then used her name and image without her knowledge or permission to raise millions for a WDHT for-profit subsidiary, "We Don't Have Time AB", of which Rentzhog is the chief executive officer. Thunberg received no money from the company and terminated her volunteer advisor role with WDHT once she realized they were making money from her name.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: After October 2018, Thunberg's activism evolved from solitary protesting to taking part in demonstrations throughout Europe; making several high-profile public speeches, and mobilizing her growing number of followers on social media platforms. After the December 2018 general elections, Thunberg continued to strike only on Fridays. She inspired school students across the globe to take part in student strikes. That month, more than 20,000 students had held strikes in at least 270 cities.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: Thunberg spoke out against the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate) 2020 and Joint Entrance Examination 2020 entrance exams, which are being conducted in India in September. She said that it is unfair for students to appear for exams in the middle of a global pandemic. She also said that the students of India have been deeply impacted by the floods that hit states such as Bihar and Assam, which cause mass destruction for the citizens.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: On 3 February 2021, Thunberg tweeted in support of the ongoing 2020–2021 Indian farmers' protest. Effigies of Thunberg were burned in Delhi by nationalists who were against the farmer protests; activists were also critical about international interference in India's internal matters. Greta Thunberg's tweet received criticism from the Indian government, which said that it was an internal matter. In her initial tweet Thunberg linked to a document which provided a campaigning toolkit for those who wanted to support the farmers' protest. This toolkit contained advice on hashtags and how to sign petitions but also included suggested actions beyond those directly linked to the farmer's protest. She soon deleted the tweet, saying the document was "outdated" and linked to an alternative one "to enable anyone unfamiliar with the ongoing farmers protests in India to better understand the situation and make decisions on how to support the farmers based on their own analysis." The 22-year-old Indian climate activist who edited the toolkit, Disha Ravi, was arrested under the charges of sedition and criminal conspiracy on 16 February.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: Her speech during the plenary session of the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP24) went viral. She commented that the world leaders present were "not mature enough to tell it like it is". In the first half of 2019, she joined various student protests around Europe, and was invited to speak at various forums and parliaments. At the January 2019 World Economic Forum, Thunberg gave a speech in which she declared: "Our house is on fire." She addressed the British, European and French parliaments, where in the latter case several right-wing politicians boycotted her. In a short meeting with Thunberg, Pope Francis thanked her and encouraged her to continue. By March 2019, Thunberg was still staging her regular protests outside the Swedish parliament every Friday, where other students occasionally joined her. According to her father, her activism has not interfered with her schoolwork, but she has had less spare time. She finished lower secondary school with good grades. In July 2019, "Time" magazine reported Thunberg was taking a "sabbatical year" from school, intending to travel in the Americas while meeting people from the climate movement.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: In August 2019, Thunberg sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from Plymouth, England, to New York, USA, in the racing yacht "Malizia II", equipped with solar panels and underwater turbines. The trip was announced as a carbon-neutral transatlantic crossing serving as a demonstration of Thunberg's declared beliefs of the importance of reducing emissions.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: France 24 reported that several crew would fly to New York to sail the yacht back to Europe. The voyage took fifteen days, from 14 to 28 August 2019. Thunberg was invited to give testimony in the US House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis on 18 September. Instead of giving testimony, she gave an eight sentence statement and submitted the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C as evidence.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: On 23 September, 2019 Thunberg attended the UN Climate Action Summit in New York City. That day the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) hosted a press conference where Thunberg joined fifteen other children including Ayakha Melithafa, Alexandria Villaseñor, Catarina Lorenzo, Carl Smith and others.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: Together, the group announced they had made an official complaint against five nations that are not on track to meet the emission reduction targets they committed to in their Paris Agreement pledges: Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, and Turkey. The complaint challenges these countries under the Third Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Protocol is a quasi-judicial mechanism which allows children or their representatives, who believe their rights have been violated, to bring a complaint before the relevant 'treaty body', the Committee on the Rights of the Child. If the complaint is successful, the countries will be asked to respond, but any suggestions are not legally binding.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: In Canada, Thunberg participated in climate protests in the cities of Montreal, Edmonton and Vancouver including leading a climate rally as part of the 27 September 2019 Global Climate Strike in Montreal. The school strikes for climate on 20 and 27 September 2019 were attended by over four million people, according to one of the co-organisers. Hundreds of thousands took part in the protest described as the largest in the city's history. The mayor of Montreal gave her the Freedom of the City. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in attendance, and Thunberg spoke briefly with him. While in the United States, Thunberg participated in climate protests in New York City with Alexandria Villaseñor and Xiye Bastida, in Washington DC with Jerome Foster II, Iowa City, Los Angeles, Charlotte, Denver with Haven Coleman, and the Standing Rock Indian Reservation with Tokata Iron Eyes. In various cities, Thunberg's keynote speech began by acknowledging that she was standing on land that originally belonged to Indigenous peoples, saying: "In acknowledging the enormous injustices inflicted upon these people, we must also mention the many enslaved and indentured servants whose labour the world still profits from today."


title: Greta Thunberg

text: Thunberg had intended to remain in the Americas to travel overland to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP25) originally planned in Santiago, Chile, in December. However, it was announced on short notice that COP25 was to be moved to Madrid, Spain, because of serious public unrest in Chile. Thunberg has refused to fly because of the carbon emissions from air travel, so she posted on social media that she needed a ride across the Atlantic Ocean. Riley Whitelum and his wife, Elayna Carausu, two Australians who had been sailing around the world aboard their catamaran "La Vagabonde", offered to take her. So on 13 November 2019, Thunberg set sail from Hampton, Virginia, for Lisbon, Portugal. Her departing message was the same as it has been since she began her activism: "My message to the Americans is the same as to everyone—that is to unite behind the science and to act on the science."


title: Greta Thunberg

text: Thunberg arrived in the Port of Lisbon on 3 December 2019, then travelled on to Madrid to speak at COP25 and to participate with the local "Fridays for Future" climate strikers. During a press conference before the march, she called for more "concrete action", arguing that the global wave of school strikes over the previous year had "achieved nothing" because greenhouse gas emissions were still rising—by 4% since 2015.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: On 30 December 2019, Thunberg was guest editor of the BBC Radio's flagship current affairs programme, the "Today Programme". Thunberg's edition of the programme featured interviews on climate change with Sir David Attenborough, Bank of England chief Mark Carney, Massive Attack's Robert Del Naja, and Shell Oil executive Maarten Wetselaar. The BBC subsequently released a podcast containing these interviews and other highlights. On 11 January 2020, Thunberg called on German company Siemens to stop the delivery of railway equipment to the controversial Carmichael coal mine operated by a subsidiary of Indian company Adani Group in Australia, but on 13 January, Siemens said that it would continue to honour its contract with Adani.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: On 21 January 2020, Thunberg returned to the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland, delivered two speeches, and participated in panel discussions hosted by "The New York Times" and the World Economic Forum. Thunberg used many of the themes contained in her previous speeches, but focused on one in particular: "Our house is still on fire." Thunberg joked that she cannot complain about not being heard, saying: "I am being heard all the time."


title: Greta Thunberg

text: In February 2020, Thunberg travelled to Oxford University to meet Malala Yousafzai, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning Pakistani activist for female education who had been shot in the head by the Taliban as a schoolgirl. Thunberg was later to join a school strike in Bristol. On 4 March 2020, Thunberg attended an extraordinary meeting of the European Parliament's Environment Committee to talk about the European Climate Law. There she declared that she considered the new proposal for a climate law published by the European Commission to be a surrender.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: On 24 August 2020, Thunberg ended her "gap year" from school when she returned to the classroom. The COVID-19 pandemic severely restricted travel and meetings in 2020 and 2021.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: In early 2020, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic caused countries worldwide to implement mitigation measures, including social distancing, quarantine, and face coverings. On 13 March 2020, Thunberg stated that "In a crisis we change our behavior and adapt to the new circumstances for the greater good of society." Thunberg and School strike for climate subsequently moved their activism and protests online. On 20 August 2020, the second anniversary of Thunberg's first strike, Thunberg and fellow climate activists Luisa Neubauer, Anuna de Wever van der Heyden and Adélaïde Charlier met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin. They subsequently announced plans for another global climate strike on 25 September 2020. Neubauer said that whether the strike in September is virtual in nature or in the streets would be determined by the pandemic situation. At a joint press conference with fellow activists echoing her sentiment, Neubauer said: "The climate crisis doesn't pause."


title: Greta Thunberg

text: On 14 December 2020, Thunberg used Twitter to criticize the New Zealand Labour Government's recent climate change emergency declaration as "virtue signalling", tweeting that New Zealand's Labour Government had only committed to reducing less than one percent of New Zealand's carbon emissions by 2025. In response, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and climate change Minister James Shaw defended New Zealand's climate change declaration as only the start of the country's climate change mitigation goals. On 29 December 2020, during a BBC interview, Thunberg said that climate experts are not being listened to despite the COVID-19 pandemic highlighting the importance of using science to address such issues. She added that the COVID-19 crisis had "shone a light" on how "we cannot make it without science".


title: Greta Thunberg

text: Thunberg and other climate activists launched the annual Climate Live concert to highlight climate change. Their first concert was held in April 2021. In May 2021, she addressed the COVID-19 crisis again, when she urged a change in the food production system and the protection of animals and their habitats. Thunberg's comments, which came amidst calls for meat-free alternatives also addressed health concerns regarding animal welfare and the environment. Thunberg said that the way humans are destroying habitats are the perfect conditions for the spread of diseases and noted zoonotic illnesses such as COVID-19, Zika, Ebola, West Nile fever, SARS, MERS, among others. In July 2021, Thunberg received her COVID vaccine, saying: "I am extremely grateful and privileged to be able to live in a part of the world where I can already get vaccinated. The vaccine distribution around the world is extremely unequal. No one is safe until everyone is safe. But when you get offered a vaccine, don’t hesitate. It saves lives."


title: Greta Thunberg

text: The inaugural edition of "Vogue Scandinavia" (August–September 2021) had a cover photograph of Thunberg shot by Swedish photography and conservationist duo Iris and Mattias Alexandrov Klum, and an interview with her. The cover shows Thunberg wearing a trench coat while sitting with an Icelandic horse in a woodland outside Stockholm. In the interview, Thunberg criticized the promotional campaigns the fashion industry uses to appear sustainable without "actually doing anything to protect the environment" and called the campaigns "greenwashing". On the same day, she used Twitter to criticize the fashion industry as "a huge contributor" to the climate and ecological "emergency" and "not to mention its impact on the countless workers and communities who are being exploited around the world in order for some to enjoy fast fashion that many treat as disposables." Thunberg's wearing of wool garnered criticism from fellow vegans. According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) she was unaware that the clothing was made of real animal-derived wool.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: On 28 September 2021, Thunberg criticized U.S. president Joe Biden, British prime minister Boris Johnson, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and other world leaders over their promises to address the climate crisis in a speech at the Youth4Climate Summit in Milan. Thunberg also criticized and doubted organizers of climate conferences, saying "They invite cherry-picked young people to meetings like this to pretend they are listening to us. But they are not." A month later, Thunberg took part in a protest in London, demanding the financial system stops funding companies and projects that use fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. The protest in London is part of a series taking place at the financial centres around the world, including New York City, San Francisco and Nairobi. She told the BBC journalist Andrew Marr that banks should "stop funding our destruction", ahead of the UN COP26 climate summit. At the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Thunberg attended a panel on climate change hosted by British actress Emma Watson.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: In November 2021, Thunberg along with other climate activists filed a petition to the United Nations, calling it to declare a level 3 global climate emergency, with the aim of creating a special team that will coordinate the response to the climate crisis at an international level. In December 2021, Thunberg reiterated her criticism of U.S. president Joe Biden, saying "If you call him a leader – I mean, it’s strange that people think of Joe Biden as a leader for the climate when you see what his administration is doing", alluding to the U.S. expansions on use of fossil fuels during the Biden administration. Thunberg further lamented that activists and teenagers are needed in order to bring awareness about climate change.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: Thunberg has condemned British mining firm Beowulf's project to mine iron on Sami land. She said, "We believe that the climate, the environment, clean air, water, reindeer herding, indigenous rights and the future of humanity should be prioritised above the short-term profit of a company. The Swedish government needs to stop the colonisation of Sami." In July 2022, Thunberg criticized the European Parliament on Twitter for voting to label fossil gas as "green" energy. She continued by stating that the result will delay a "desperately needed real sustainable transition and deepen our dependency on Russian fuels. The hypocrisy is striking, but unfortunately not surprising." In September 2022, Thunberg criticized the government for spending "all their time distracting, delaying and denying the necessary changes ahead of us. The emissions of CO2 are not reducing - they are still increasing." She continued by stating: "The world is still expanding fossil fuel infrastructure and pouring astronomical amounts of money into destruction. We are still speeding in the wrong direction. There is indeed a long way ahead of us but we are still here and we are not planning on going anywhere." Thunberg along with over 600 young people filed a lawsuit against the Swedish state for climate inaction in the country. The lawsuit was submitted to the Stockholm district court.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: "The Climate Book" is a compilation complied by Thunberg in which she brings together over one hundred expertsgeophysicists, oceanographers and meteorologists; engineers, economists and mathematicians; historians, philosophers and indigenous leaderswho wrote essays focusing on changes to the Earth's climate. Thunberg also contributed writings to the book and is credited as its author. She donated her copyright and all royalties generated by the book to her foundation and will not personally profit from sales or other commercial uses. While on her 2022 midterm Autumn break from school, Thunberg embarked on a publicity campaign for the book's initial release which occurred in the UK on 27 October 2022 and in Australia on 1 November 2022; it is published under Penguin's Allen Lane Imprint books. On 14 February 2023 it will be released in the United States and elsewhere. An extract from "The Climate Book" and reviews are available.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: Thunberg asserts that humanity is facing an existential crisis because of global warming and holds the current generation of adults responsible for creating the problem. She uses graphic analogies (such as "our house is on fire") to highlight her concerns and often speaks bluntly to business and political leaders about their failure to take concerted action.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: Thunberg has said that climate change will have a disproportionate effect on young people whose futures will be profoundly affected. She argues that her generation may not have a future any more because "that future was sold so that a small number of people could make unimaginable amounts of money." She also has said that people in the Global South will suffer most from climate change, even though they have contributed least in terms of carbon dioxide emissions. Thunberg has voiced support for other young activists from developing countries who are already facing the damaging effects of climate change. Speaking in Madrid in December 2019, she said: "We talk about our future, they talk about their present."


title: Greta Thunberg

text: Speaking at international forums, she berates world leaders that too little action is being taken to reduce global emissions. She says that lowering emissions is not enough, and says emissions need to be reduced to zero if the world is to keep global warming to less than 1.5 °C. Speaking to the British Parliament in April 2019, she said: "The fact that we are speaking of 'lowering' instead of 'stopping' emissions is perhaps the greatest force behind the continuing business as usual." In order to take the necessary action, she added that politicians should not listen to her, they should listen to what the scientists are saying about how to address the crisis. According to political scientists Mattia Zulianello and Diego Ceccobelli, Thunberg's ideas can be defined as technocratic ecocentrism, which is grounded on "the exaltation of the vox scientifica".


title: Greta Thunberg

text: More specifically, Thunberg has argued that commitments made at the Paris Agreement are insufficient to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, and that the greenhouse gas emissions curve needs to start declining steeply no later than 2020—as detailed in the IPCC's 2018 Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C. In February 2019, at a conference of the European Economic and Social Committee, she said that the EU's current intention to cut emissions by 40% by 2030 is "not sufficient to protect the future for children growing up today" and that the EU must reduce their emissions by 80%, double the 40% goal.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: Thunberg reiterated her views on political inaction in a November 2020 interview where she stated "leaders are happy to set targets for decades ahead, but flinch when immediate action is needed." She criticized the European Green Deal, which aims to make the EU climate neutral by 2050, saying that it "sends a strong signal that real and sufficient action is being taken when in fact it's not. Nature doesn't bargain, and you cannot make deals with physics."


title: Greta Thunberg

text: In an interview shortly before the 2021 COP26 conference in Glasgow, Thunberg, asked how optimistic she was that the conference could achieve anything, responded "Nothing has changed from previous years really. The leaders will say 'we'll do this and we'll do this, and we will put our forces together and achieve this', and then they will do nothing. Maybe some symbolic things and creative accounting and things that don't really have a big impact. We can have as many COPs as we want, but nothing real will come out of it." She called Chinese president Xi Jinping "a leader of a dictatorship" and said that "democracy is the only solution to the climate crisis, since the only thing that could get us out of this situation is ... massive public pressure."


title: Greta Thunberg

text: On 30 October 2021 she arrived at Glasgow Central station for the COP26. She spoke at some protests during the COP, and marched in a Fridays for Future Scotland climate strike on Friday 5 November; she said in an earlier interview that the public needed to "uproot the system". She delivered a in which she described COP26 as a failure, speaking of "blah blah blah" and greenwashing.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: Thunberg has received both strong support and strong criticism for her work from politicians and the press, reflecting the difficulties encountered by leading environmental and scientific voices to be heard in the corridors in power. Thunberg has met with many politicians and world leaders, but said that she could not think of a single politician who has impressed her. Asked about New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, who described the climate crisis as a matter of life or death, Thunberg commented "It's funny that people believe Jacinda Ardern and people like that are climate leaders. That just tells you how little people know about the climate crisis." Thunberg ignores words and sentiments: "Obviously the emissions haven't fallen. It goes without saying that these people are not doing anything" (in fact New Zealand's greenhouse-gas emissions had increased by 2% in 2019).


title: Greta Thunberg

text: In February 2019, 224 academics signed an open letter of support stating they were inspired by Thunberg's actions and the striking school children in making their voices heard. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres endorsed the school strikes initiated by Thunberg, admitting: "My generation has failed to respond properly to the dramatic challenge of climate change. This is deeply felt by young people. No wonder they are angry." Speaking at an event in New Zealand in May 2019, Guterres said his generation was "not winning the battle against climate change" and that it was up to the youth to "rescue the planet".


title: Greta Thunberg

text: Democratic candidates for the 2020 United States presidential election such as Kamala Harris, Beto O'Rourke, and Bernie Sanders expressed support after her speech at the September 2019 action summit in New York. German Chancellor Angela Merkel indicated that young activists such as Thunberg had driven her government to act faster on climate change.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: Thunberg and her campaign have been criticized by politicians as well, ranging from personal attacks to statements that she oversimplifies the complex issues involved. Among them are the Australian prime minister Scott Morrison, German chancellor Angela Merkel, French president Emmanuel Macron, Russian president Vladimir Putin, OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) and repeatedly by U.S. president Donald Trump.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: In September 2019, Trump shared a video of Thunberg angrily addressing world leaders, along with her quote that "people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction." Trump wrote about Thunberg, tweeting: "She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!" Thunberg reacted by changing her Twitter bio to match his description, and stating that she could not "understand why grown-ups would choose to mock children and teenagers for just communicating and acting on the science when they could do something good instead." In December 2019, President Trump again mocked Thunberg after she was named Person of the Year for 2019 by "Time", tweeting: "So ridiculous. Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!" Thunberg responded by changing her Twitter biography to: "A teenager working on her anger management problem. Currently chilling and watching a good old fashioned movie with a friend." During the 2020 United States presidential election, Thunberg commented on Trump tweeting "STOP THE COUNT!" with the text: "So ridiculous. Donald must work on his Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Donald, Chill!"


title: Greta Thunberg

text: In October 2019, Putin described Thunberg as a "kind girl and very sincere", while suggesting she was being manipulated to serve others' interests. Putin criticized her as "poorly informed", adding: "No one has explained to Greta that the modern world is complex and different and people in Africa or in many Asian countries want to live at the same wealth level as in Sweden." Similar to her reaction to Trump, Thunberg updated her Twitter bio to reflect Putin's description of her. In December 2019, Thunberg tweeted: "Indigenous people are literally being murdered for trying to protect the forest from illegal deforestation. Over and over again. It is shameful that the world remains silent about this." When asked about this subject two days later, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro responded: "Greta said that the Indians were dying because they were trying to protect the Amazon. It is impressive how the press gives voice to such a brat." On the same day, Thunberg changed her Twitter description to "pirralha", the Portuguese word for "brat" used by Bolsonaro.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: In a May 2019 interview with Suyin Haynes in "Time", Thunberg addressed the criticism she has received online saying: "It's quite hilarious when the only thing people can do is mock you, or talk about your appearance or personality, as it means they have no argument or nothing else to say." Former U.S. vice-president and Trump's eventual successor Joe Biden responded to President Trump's tweet mocking Thunberg after she was named the "Time"s Person of the Year 2019 by tweeting at Trump: "What kind of president bullies a teenager? @realDonaldTrump, you could learn a few things from Greta on what it means to be a leader."


title: Greta Thunberg

text: On 30 March 2021, European Commissioner for Climate Action Frans Timmermans said in a tweet after talking to Thunberg that "The Commission remains committed" to making the Common Agricultural Policy "fulfill the objectives" of the European Green Deal.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: In August 2019, Scott Walsman wrote in "Scientific American" that Thunberg's detractors have "launched personal attacks", "bash [her] autism", and "increasingly rely on ad hominem attacks to blunt her influence". Writing in "The Guardian", Aditya Chakrabortty said that columnists including Brendan O'Neill, Toby Young, the blog "Guido Fawkes", as well as Helen Dale and Rod Liddle at "The Spectator" and "The Sunday Times" had been making "ugly personal attacks" on Thunberg. British TV presenter Piers Morgan also mocked Thunberg. As part of its climate change denial, Germany's right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has attacked Thunberg "in fairly vicious ways", according to Jakob Guhl, a researcher for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: Arron Banks' Twitter post saying that "freak yachting accidents do happen in August" outraged a number of British MPs (Member of Parliament), celebrities, and academics. Tanja Bueltmann, founder of EU Citizens' Champion, said Banks had "invoked the drowning of a child" for his own amusement and said that most of those attacking Thunberg "are white middle-aged men from the right of the political spectrum". Writing in "The Guardian", Gaby Hinsliff, said Thunberg has become "the new front in the Brexit culture war" arguing that the outrage generated by personal attacks on Thunberg by Brexiteers "gives them the welcome oxygen of publicity".


title: Greta Thunberg

text: In September 2019, Nick Gillespie wrote in "Reason" that "Greta Thunberg's histrionics are likely heartfelt but neither they nor the deplorable responses they conjure are a guide forward to good environmental policy in a world that is getting richer every day." In August 2021, Yasmeen Serhan wrote in "The Atlantic" that Thunberg had become "the target of a barrage of disinformation and conspiracies" from the far-right and populist right, "including depictions of her as a spoiled child, a leftist pawn, and even a Nazi".


title: Greta Thunberg

text: Thunberg has inspired a number of her school-aged peers in what has been described as "the Greta effect". In response to her outspoken stance, various politicians have also acknowledged the need to focus on climate change. Britain's secretary for the environment, Michael Gove, said: "When I listened to you, I felt great admiration, but also responsibility and guilt. I am of your parents' generation, and I recognize that we haven't done nearly enough to address climate change and the broader environmental crisis that we helped to create." Labour politician Ed Miliband, who was responsible for introducing the Climate Change Act 2008, said: "You have woken us up. [T]hank you. All the young people who have gone on strike have held up a mirror to our society … you have taught us all a really important lesson. You have stood out from the crowd."


title: Greta Thunberg

text: In February 2019, Thunberg shared a stage with the then President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, where he outlined: "In the next financial period from 2021 to 2027, every fourth euro spent within the EU budget will go towards action to mitigate climate change." Climate issues also played a significant role in European Parliament election in May 2019 as Green parties recorded their best ever results, boosting their MEP seat numbers from 52 to 72. Many of the gains came from northern European countries where young people have taken to the streets inspired by Thunberg.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: In June 2019, a YouGov poll in Britain found that public concern about the environment had soared to record levels in the UK since Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion had "pierced the bubble of denial". In August 2019, publication and sales of children's books about the climate crisis reportedly doubled compared to the previous year. Publishers attribute this to the "Greta effect". Inspired by Thunberg, wealthy philanthropists and investors from the United States have donated about $600,000 to support Extinction Rebellion and school strike groups to establish the Climate Emergency Fund. Trevor Neilson, one of the philanthropists, said the three founders would be contacting friends among the global mega-rich to donate "a hundred times" more in the weeks and months ahead. In December 2019, the "New Scientist" described the impact made by Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion with the headline: "The year the world woke up to climate change."


title: Greta Thunberg

text: According to a 2021 study, "those who are more familiar with Greta Thunberg have higher intentions of taking collective actions to reduce global warming and that stronger collective efficacy beliefs mediate this relationship. This association between familiarity with Greta Thunberg, collective efficacy beliefs, and collective action intentions is present even after accounting for respondents' overall support for climate activism."


title: Greta Thunberg

text: Thunberg has spearheaded the anti-flying movement, promoting rail travel over flying on environmental grounds. The buzzword associated with this movement is "flygskam" or "flight shame". It is a phenomenon in which people feel social pressure not to fly because of the rising greenhouse gas emissions of the airline industry. It was originally championed by Swedish Olympic athlete Björn Ferry, but has gained significant momentum after Thunberg's refusal to fly on environmental grounds. Thunberg backed the campaign to fly less, and made it part of her 2019 "awareness tour" in Europe. Sweden has reported a 4% drop in domestic air travel for 2019 and an increase in rail use. The BBC says that the movement could halve the growth of global air travel, but Airbus and Boeing say that they still expect to grow at around 4% until 2035. In June 2019, Swedish Railways (SJ) reported that the number of Swedes taking the train for domestic journeys had risen by 8% from the previous year, reflecting growing public concern (reflected in a survey published by the Swedish Railways) about the impact of flying on emissions.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: A sticker was handed out by X-Site Energy Services of Alberta, Canada, with the company's name on it with an image of a man grabbing the braids of a girl while raping her from behind, and the word "Greta" on the image. Then 17-year-old Greta Thunberg posted about it on Twitter "They are starting to get more and more desperate. This shows that we're winning." Although the general manager of X-Site initially said that neither X-Site, nor any X-Site employee, was involved in making the sticker, X-Site Energy later apologized, admitting that they have distributed it and are assuming full responsibility. The letter asserted that they were destroying known extant copies and making organizational changes to prevent future incidents.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: Thunberg has been depicted in popular culture and art. "Greta and the Giants", a book by Zoë Tucker and Zoe Persico, published by Frances Lincoln Children's Books, was inspired by the life of Thunberg. Argentinian artist Andrés Iglesias unveiled an 18 meter mural of Thunberg above Mason street, near Union Square in San Francisco. American painter Elizabeth Peyton chose her 2019 portrait "Greta Thunberg" as the leading image of one of her shows. She has been depicted in multiple murals. In Bristol, a mural of Thunberg by artist Jody Thomas, portrays the bottom half of her face as if under rising sea water since May 2019. Thunberg was featured on the "Time" magazine cover in May 2019 issue, where she was described as a role model and one of the "Next Generation Leaders". She and fifteen others were featured on the cover of the fashion magazine "Vogue" created by guest editor Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, in September 2019.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: Some of Thunberg's speeches have been incorporated into music. In 2019, Thunberg contributed a voiceover for a release of "The 1975", a song by the English band by the same name. Thunberg finishes the song by urging: "So, everyone out there, it is now time for civil disobedience. It is time to rebel." Proceeds will go to Extinction Rebellion at Thunberg's request. In September 2019, John Meredith set her UN Action Summit speech to death metal. The Australian musician Megan Washington and composer Robert Davidson used the same 'how dare you' speech, for a performance at an event exploring the future of music. DJ Fatboy Slim created a mashup of this speech with his dance hit "Right Here, Right Now".


title: Greta Thunberg

text: "Make the World Greta Again" is a 30-minute documentary released by "Vice" featuring interviews with a number of youth protest leaders in Europe, and showing the run-up to the March 2019 global climate protests.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: In 2019, Thunberg collaborated with the climate charity Project Pressure, on an art piece projected onto the UN building in New York in the lead up to the UN Climate Action Summit featuring the voices of six young activists, including Thunberg herself. Vizualised by Joseph Michael, authored by Klaus Thymann and music by Brian Eno, their commentary was on the climate crisis and the urgent actions that need to be taken to minimize its consequences.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: On 29 January 2020, Thunberg said that she had filed to trademark her name, the name ""Fridays for Future"", and "Skolstrejk för klimatet" to protect her movement from commercial interests. She says she has no interest in trademarks, but "it needs to be done" because her name and movement were constantly being used for commercial purposes without consent.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: In May 2020, Thunberg was featured in Pearl Jam's music video 'Retrograde'. She appears as a fortune teller, with images in her crystal ball depicting startling effects of climate change in numerous countries.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: On 3 September 2020, the Hulu cinéma vérité-esque documentary "I Am Greta" had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. The film was directed by Nathan Grossman, who single-handedly operated the camera and sound equipment while memorializing Thunberg's climate activism "from the first solitary days of her school strike in August 2018, all the way through to her two-week sea voyage across the Atlantic [Ocean from Europe to New York City] to attend the United Nations Climate Summit in September 2019." Following its Venice premiere, the film had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on 11 September 2020, and opened in cinemas across Europe, North America and Australia in October. Hulu began streaming "I am Greta" in the United States in November 2020.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: In March 2021, the University of Winchester installed a life-sized sculpture of Thunberg on its campus.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: BBC Studios made a three-part series "", with planned visits to various countries omitted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Production was announced in February 2020, and the series was broadcast in April 2021.


title: Greta Thunberg

text: Thunberg has received honours and awards over the course of her activism. In May 2018, before the start of her school strike, she was one of the winners of a climate change essay competition by "Svenska Dagbladet (The Swedish Daily News)" for young people. Thunberg has refused to attend ceremonies or accept prizes if it requires her to fly, such as for the International Children's Peace Prize. She has received prizes from various NGOs but also from scientific institutions that lauded her success in raising awareness.


title: Water

text: Water (chemical formula ) is an inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living organisms (in which it acts as a solvent). It is vital for all known forms of life, despite not providing food, energy or organic micronutrients. Its chemical formula, HO, indicates that each of its molecules contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms, connected by covalent bonds. The hydrogen atoms are attached to the oxygen atom at an angle of 104.45°. "Water" is also the name of the liquid state of HO at standard temperature and pressure.


title: Water

text: A number of natural states of water exist. It forms precipitation in the form of rain and aerosols in the form of fog. Clouds consist of suspended droplets of water and ice, its solid state. When finely divided, crystalline ice may precipitate in the form of snow. The gaseous state of water is steam or water vapor.


title: Water

text: Water covers about 71% of the Earth's surface, with seas and oceans making up most of the water volume on earth (about 96.5%). Small portions of water occur as groundwater (1.7%), in the glaciers and the ice caps of Antarctica and Greenland (1.7%), and in the air as vapor, clouds (consisting of ice and liquid water suspended in air), and precipitation (0.001%). Water moves continually through the water cycle of evaporation, transpiration (evapotranspiration), condensation, precipitation, and runoff, usually reaching the sea.


title: Water

text: Water plays an important role in the world economy. Approximately 70% of the freshwater used by humans goes to agriculture. Fishing in salt and fresh water bodies has been, and continues to be a major source of food for many parts of the world, providing 6.5% of global protein. Much of the long-distance trade of commodities (such as oil, natural gas, and manufactured products) is transported by boats through seas, rivers, lakes, and canals. Large quantities of water, ice, and steam are used for cooling and heating, in industry and homes. Water is an excellent solvent for a wide variety of substances both mineral and organic; as such it is widely used in industrial processes, and in cooking and washing. Water, ice and snow are also central to many sports and other forms of entertainment, such as swimming, pleasure boating, boat racing, surfing, sport fishing, diving, ice skating and skiing.


title: Water

text: The word "water" comes from Old English , from Proto-Germanic *"watar" (source also of Old Saxon , Old Frisian , Dutch , Old High German , German , , Gothic (), from Proto-Indo-European *"wod-or", suffixed form of root *"wed-" ("water"; "wet"). Also cognate, through the Indo-European root, with Greek (, from Ancient Greek , "hýdōr," whence English "hydro-"), Russian (), Irish , and Albanian .


title: Water

text: Water () is a polar inorganic compound. At room temperature it is a tasteless and odorless liquid, nearly colorless with a hint of blue. This simplest hydrogen chalcogenide is by far the most studied chemical compound and is described as the "universal solvent" for its ability to dissolve many substances. This allows it to be the "solvent of life": indeed, water as found in nature almost always includes various dissolved substances, and special steps are required to obtain chemically pure water. Water is the only common substance to exist as a solid, liquid, and gas in normal terrestrial conditions.


title: Water

text: Along with "oxidane", "water" is one of the two official names for the chemical compound ; it is also the liquid phase of . The other two common states of matter of water are the solid phase, ice, and the gaseous phase, water vapor or steam. The addition or removal of heat can cause phase transitions: freezing (water to ice), melting (ice to water), vaporization (water to vapor), condensation (vapor to water), sublimation (ice to vapor) and deposition (vapor to ice).


title: Water

text: Water differs from most liquids in that it becomes less dense as it freezes. In 1 atm pressure, it reaches its maximum density of at , or almost at almost . The density of ice is , an expansion of 9%. This expansion can exert enormous pressure, bursting pipes and cracking rocks.


title: Water

text: In a lake or ocean, water at sinks to the bottom, and ice forms on the surface, floating on the liquid water. This ice insulates the water below, preventing it from freezing solid. Without this protection, most aquatic organisms residing in lakes would perish during the winter.


title: Water

text: Water is a diamagnetic material. Though interaction is weak, with superconducting magnets it can attain a notable interaction.


title: Water

text: At a pressure of one atmosphere (atm), ice melts or water freezes (solidifies) at ) and water boils or vapor condenses at . However, even below the boiling point, water can change to vapor at its surface by evaporation (vaporization throughout the liquid is known as boiling). Sublimation and deposition also occur on surfaces. For example, frost is deposited on cold surfaces while snowflakes form by deposition on an aerosol particle or ice nucleus. In the process of freeze-drying, a food is frozen and then stored at low pressure so the ice on its surface sublimates.


title: Water

text: The melting and boiling points depend on pressure. A good approximation for the rate of change of the melting temperature with pressure is given by the Clausius–Clapeyron relation:


title: Water

text: where formula_2 and formula_3 are the molar volumes of the liquid and solid phases, and formula_4 is the molar latent heat of melting. In most substances, the volume increases when melting occurs, so the melting temperature increases with pressure. However, because ice is less dense than water, the melting temperature decreases. In glaciers, pressure melting can occur under sufficiently thick volumes of ice, resulting in subglacial lakes.


title: Water

text: The Clausius-Clapeyron relation also applies to the boiling point, but with the liquid/gas transition the vapor phase has a much lower density than the liquid phase, so the boiling point increases with pressure. Water can remain in a liquid state at high temperatures in the deep ocean or underground. For example, temperatures exceed in Old Faithful, a geyser in Yellowstone National Park. In hydrothermal vents, the temperature can exceed .


title: Water

text: At sea level, the boiling point of water is . As atmospheric pressure decreases with altitude, the boiling point decreases by 1 °C every 274 meters. High-altitude cooking takes longer than sea-level cooking. For example, at , cooking time must be increased by a fourth to achieve the desired result. (Conversely, a pressure cooker can be used to decrease cooking times by raising the boiling temperature.)


title: Water

text: On a pressure/temperature phase diagram (see figure), there are curves separating solid from vapor, vapor from liquid, and liquid from solid. These meet at a single point called the triple point, where all three phases can coexist. The triple point is at a temperature of and a pressure of ; it is the lowest pressure at which liquid water can exist. Until 2019, the triple point was used to define the Kelvin temperature scale.


title: Water

text: The water/vapor phase curve terminates at and . This is known as the critical point. At higher temperatures and pressures the liquid and vapor phases form a continuous phase called a supercritical fluid. It can be gradually compressed or expanded between gas-like and liquid-like densities; its properties (which are quite different from those of ambient water) are sensitive to density. For example, for suitable pressures and temperatures it can mix freely with nonpolar compounds, including most organic compounds. This makes it useful in a variety of applications including high-temperature electrochemistry and as an ecologically benign solvent or catalyst in chemical reactions involving organic compounds. In Earth's mantle, it acts as a solvent during mineral formation, dissolution and deposition.


title: Water

text: The normal form of ice on the surface of Earth is Ice Ih, a phase that forms crystals with hexagonal symmetry. Another with cubic crystalline symmetry, Ice Ic, can occur in the upper atmosphere. As the pressure increases, ice forms other crystal structures. As of 2019, 17 have been experimentally confirmed and several more are predicted theoretically (see Ice). The 18th form of ice, ice XVIII, a face-centred-cubic, superionic ice phase, was discovered when a droplet of water was subject to a shock wave that raised the water's pressure to millions of atmospheres and its temperature to thousands of degrees, resulting in a structure of rigid oxygen atoms in which hydrogen atoms flowed freely. When sandwiched between layers of graphene, ice forms a square lattice.


title: Water

text: The details of the chemical nature of liquid water are not well understood; some theories suggest that its unusual behaviour is due to the existence of 2 liquid states.


title: Water

text: Pure water is usually described as tasteless and odorless, although humans have specific sensors that can feel the presence of water in their mouths, and frogs are known to be able to smell it. However, water from ordinary sources (including bottled mineral water) usually has many dissolved substances, that may give it varying tastes and odors. Humans and other animals have developed senses that enable them to evaluate the potability of water in order to avoid water that is too salty or putrid.


title: Water

text: Pure water is visibly blue due to absorption of light in the region c. 600–800 nm. The color can be easily observed in a glass of tap-water placed against a pure white background, in daylight. The principal absorption bands responsible for the color are overtones of the O–H stretching vibrations. The apparent intensity of the color increases with the depth of the water column, following Beer's law. This also applies, for example, with a swimming pool when the light source is sunlight reflected from the pool's white tiles.


title: Water

text: In nature, the color may also be modified from blue to green due to the presence of suspended solids or algae.


title: Water

text: In industry, near-infrared spectroscopy is used with aqueous solutions as the greater intensity of the lower overtones of water means that glass cuvettes with short path-length may be employed. To observe the fundamental stretching absorption spectrum of water or of an aqueous solution in the region around 3,500 cm (2.85 μm) a path length of about 25 μm is needed. Also, the cuvette must be both transparent around 3500 cm and insoluble in water; calcium fluoride is one material that is in common use for the cuvette windows with aqueous solutions.


title: Water

text: Aquatic plants, algae, and other photosynthetic organisms can live in water up to hundreds of meters deep, because sunlight can reach them.


title: Water

text: The refractive index of liquid water (1.333 at ) is much higher than that of air (1.0), similar to those of alkanes and ethanol, but lower than those of glycerol (1.473), benzene (1.501), carbon disulfide (1.627), and common types of glass (1.4 to 1.6). The refraction index of ice (1.31) is lower than that of liquid water.


title: Water

text: In a water molecule, the hydrogen atoms form a 104.5° angle with the oxygen atom. The hydrogen atoms are close to two corners of a tetrahedron centered on the oxygen. At the other two corners are "lone pairs" of valence electrons that do not participate in the bonding. In a perfect tetrahedron, the atoms would form a 109.5° angle, but the repulsion between the lone pairs is greater than the repulsion between the hydrogen atoms. The O–H bond length is about 0.096 nm.


title: Water

text: Other substances have a tetrahedral molecular structure, for example, methane () and hydrogen sulfide (). However, oxygen is more electronegative (holds on to its electrons more tightly) than most other elements, so the oxygen atom retains a negative charge while the hydrogen atoms are positively charged. Along with the bent structure, this gives the molecule an electrical dipole moment and it is classified as a polar molecule.


title: Water

text: Water is a good polar solvent, that dissolves many salts and hydrophilic organic molecules such as sugars and simple alcohols such as ethanol. Water also dissolves many gases, such as oxygen and carbon dioxide—the latter giving the fizz of carbonated beverages, sparkling wines and beers. In addition, many substances in living organisms, such as proteins, DNA and polysaccharides, are dissolved in water. The interactions between water and the subunits of these biomacromolecules shape protein folding, DNA base pairing, and other phenomena crucial to life (hydrophobic effect).


title: Water

text: Many organic substances (such as fats and oils and alkanes) are hydrophobic, that is, insoluble in water. Many inorganic substances are insoluble too, including most metal oxides, sulfides, and silicates.


title: Water

text: Because of its polarity, a molecule of water in the liquid or solid state can form up to four hydrogen bonds with neighboring molecules. Hydrogen bonds are about ten times as strong as the Van der Waals force that attracts molecules to each other in most liquids. This is the reason why the melting and boiling points of water are much higher than those of other analogous compounds like hydrogen sulfide. They also explain its exceptionally high specific heat capacity (about 4.2 J/g/K), heat of fusion (about 333 J/g), heat of vaporization (), and thermal conductivity (between 0.561 and 0.679 W/m/K). These properties make water more effective at moderating Earth's climate, by storing heat and transporting it between the oceans and the atmosphere. The hydrogen bonds of water are around 23 kJ/mol (compared to a covalent O-H bond at 492 kJ/mol). Of this, it is estimated that 90% is attributable to electrostatics, while the remaining 10% is partially covalent.


title: Water

text: These bonds are the cause of water's high surface tension and capillary forces. The capillary action refers to the tendency of water to move up a narrow tube against the force of gravity. This property is relied upon by all vascular plants, such as trees.


title: Water

text: Water is a weak solution of hydronium hydroxide – there is an equilibrium ⇔ + , in combination with solvation of the resulting hydronium ions.


title: Water

text: Pure water has a low electrical conductivity, which increases with the dissolution of a small amount of ionic material such as common salt.


title: Water

text: Liquid water can be split into the elements hydrogen and oxygen by passing an electric current through it—a process called electrolysis. The decomposition requires more energy input than the heat released by the inverse process (285.8 kJ/mol, or 15.9 MJ/kg).


title: Water

text: Liquid water can be assumed to be incompressible for most purposes: its compressibility ranges from 4.4 to in ordinary conditions. Even in oceans at 4 km depth, where the pressure is 400 atm, water suffers only a 1.8% decrease in volume.


title: Water

text: The viscosity of water is about 10 Pa·s or 0.01 poise at , and the speed of sound in liquid water ranges between depending on temperature. Sound travels long distances in water with little attenuation, especially at low frequencies (roughly 0.03 dB/km for 1 kHz), a property that is exploited by cetaceans and humans for communication and environment sensing (sonar).


title: Water

text: Metallic elements which are more electropositive than hydrogen, particularly the alkali metals and alkaline earth metals such as lithium, sodium, calcium, potassium and cesium displace hydrogen from water, forming hydroxides and releasing hydrogen. At high temperatures, carbon reacts with steam to form carbon monoxide and hydrogen.


title: Water

text: Hydrology is the study of the movement, distribution, and quality of water throughout the Earth. The study of the distribution of water is hydrography. The study of the distribution and movement of groundwater is hydrogeology, of glaciers is glaciology, of inland waters is limnology and distribution of oceans is oceanography. Ecological processes with hydrology are in the focus of ecohydrology.


title: Water

text: The collective mass of water found on, under, and over the surface of a planet is called the hydrosphere. Earth's approximate water volume (the total water supply of the world) is .


title: Water

text: Liquid water is found in bodies of water, such as an ocean, sea, lake, river, stream, canal, pond, or puddle. The majority of water on Earth is seawater. Water is also present in the atmosphere in solid, liquid, and vapor states. It also exists as groundwater in aquifers.


title: Water

text: Water is important in many geological processes. Groundwater is present in most rocks, and the pressure of this groundwater affects patterns of faulting. Water in the mantle is responsible for the melt that produces volcanoes at subduction zones. On the surface of the Earth, water is important in both chemical and physical weathering processes. Water, and to a lesser but still significant extent, ice, are also responsible for a large amount of sediment transport that occurs on the surface of the earth. Deposition of transported sediment forms many types of sedimentary rocks, which make up the geologic record of Earth history.


title: Water

text: The water cycle (known scientifically as the hydrologic cycle) is the continuous exchange of water within the hydrosphere, between the atmosphere, soil water, surface water, groundwater, and plants.


title: Water

text: Water moves perpetually through each of these regions in the "water cycle" consisting of the following transfer processes:


title: Water

text: Most water vapors found mostly in the ocean returns to it, but winds carry water vapor over land at the same rate as runoff into the sea, about 47 Tt per year whilst evaporation and transpiration happening in land masses also contribute another 72 Tt per year. Precipitation, at a rate of 119 Tt per year over land, has several forms: most commonly rain, snow, and hail, with some contribution from fog and dew. Dew is small drops of water that are condensed when a high density of water vapor meets a cool surface. Dew usually forms in the morning when the temperature is the lowest, just before sunrise and when the temperature of the earth's surface starts to increase. Condensed water in the air may also refract sunlight to produce rainbows.


title: Water

text: Water runoff often collects over watersheds flowing into rivers. Through erosion, runoff shapes the environment creating river valleys and deltas which provide rich soil and level ground for the establishment of population centers. A flood occurs when an area of land, usually low-lying, is covered with water which occurs when a river overflows its banks or a storm surge happens. On the other hand, drought is an extended period of months or years when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply. This occurs when a region receives consistently below average precipitation either due to its topography or due to its location in terms of latitude.


title: Water

text: Water resources are natural resources of water that are potentially useful for humans, for example as a source of drinking water supply or irrigation water. Water occurs as both "stocks" and "flows". Water can be stored as lakes, water vapor, groundwater or aquifers, and ice and snow. Of the total volume of global freshwater, an estimated 69 percent is stored in glaciers and permanent snow cover; 30 percent is in groundwater; and the remaining 1 percent in lakes, rivers, the atmosphere, and biota. The length of time water remains in storage is highly variable: some aquifers consist of water stored over thousands of years but lake volumes may fluctuate on a seasonal basis, decreasing during dry periods and increasing during wet ones. A substantial fraction of the water supply for some regions consists of water extracted from water stored in stocks, and when withdrawals exceed recharge, stocks decrease. By some estimates, as much as 30 percent of total water used for irrigation comes from unsustainable withdrawals of groundwater, causing groundwater depletion.


title: Water

text: Seawater contains about 3.5% sodium chloride on average, plus smaller amounts of other substances. The physical properties of seawater differ from fresh water in some important respects. It freezes at a lower temperature (about ) and its density increases with decreasing temperature to the freezing point, instead of reaching maximum density at a temperature above freezing. The salinity of water in major seas varies from about 0.7% in the Baltic Sea to 4.0% in the Red Sea. (The Dead Sea, known for its ultra-high salinity levels of between 30 and 40%, is really a salt lake.)


title: Water

text: Tides are the cyclic rising and falling of local sea levels caused by the tidal forces of the Moon and the Sun acting on the oceans. Tides cause changes in the depth of the marine and estuarine water bodies and produce oscillating currents known as tidal streams. The changing tide produced at a given location is the result of the changing positions of the Moon and Sun relative to the Earth coupled with the effects of Earth rotation and the local bathymetry. The strip of seashore that is submerged at high tide and exposed at low tide, the intertidal zone, is an important ecological product of ocean tides.


title: Water

text: From a biological standpoint, water has many distinct properties that are critical for the proliferation of life. It carries out this role by allowing organic compounds to react in ways that ultimately allow replication. All known forms of life depend on water. Water is vital both as a solvent in which many of the body's solutes dissolve and as an essential part of many metabolic processes within the body. Metabolism is the sum total of anabolism and catabolism. In anabolism, water is removed from molecules (through energy requiring enzymatic chemical reactions) in order to grow larger molecules (e.g., starches, triglycerides, and proteins for storage of fuels and information). In catabolism, water is used to break bonds in order to generate smaller molecules (e.g., glucose, fatty acids, and amino acids to be used for fuels for energy use or other purposes). Without water, these particular metabolic processes could not exist.


title: Water

text: Water is fundamental to photosynthesis and respiration. Photosynthetic cells use the sun's energy to split off water's hydrogen from oxygen. Hydrogen is combined with (absorbed from air or water) to form glucose and release oxygen. All living cells use such fuels and oxidize the hydrogen and carbon to capture the sun's energy and reform water and in the process (cellular respiration).


title: Water

text: Water is also central to acid-base neutrality and enzyme function. An acid, a hydrogen ion (, that is, a proton) donor, can be neutralized by a base, a proton acceptor such as a hydroxide ion () to form water. Water is considered to be neutral, with a pH (the negative log of the hydrogen ion concentration) of 7. Acids have pH values less than 7 while bases have values greater than 7.


title: Water

text: Earth surface waters are filled with life. The earliest life forms appeared in water; nearly all fish live exclusively in water, and there are many types of marine mammals, such as dolphins and whales. Some kinds of animals, such as amphibians, spend portions of their lives in water and portions on land. Plants such as kelp and algae grow in the water and are the basis for some underwater ecosystems. Plankton is generally the foundation of the ocean food chain.


title: Water

text: Aquatic vertebrates must obtain oxygen to survive, and they do so in various ways. Fish have gills instead of lungs, although some species of fish, such as the lungfish, have both. Marine mammals, such as dolphins, whales, otters, and seals need to surface periodically to breathe air. Some amphibians are able to absorb oxygen through their skin. Invertebrates exhibit a wide range of modifications to survive in poorly oxygenated waters including breathing tubes (see insect and mollusc siphons) and gills ("Carcinus"). However, as invertebrate life evolved in an aquatic habitat most have little or no specialization for respiration in water.


title: Water

text: Civilization has historically flourished around rivers and major waterways; Mesopotamia, one of the so-called cradles of civilization, was situated between the major rivers Tigris and Euphrates; the ancient society of the Egyptians depended entirely upon the Nile. The early Indus Valley civilization (c. 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE) developed along the Indus River and tributaries that flowed out of the Himalayas. Rome was also founded on the banks of the Italian river Tiber. Large metropolises like Rotterdam, London, Montreal, Paris, New York City, Buenos Aires, Shanghai, Tokyo, Chicago, and Hong Kong owe their success in part to their easy accessibility via water and the resultant expansion of trade. Islands with safe water ports, like Singapore, have flourished for the same reason. In places such as North Africa and the Middle East, where water is more scarce, access to clean drinking water was and is a major factor in human development.


title: Water

text: Water fit for human consumption is called drinking water or potable water. Water that is not potable may be made potable by filtration or distillation, or by a range of other methods. More than 660 million people do not have access to safe drinking water.


title: Water

text: Water that is not fit for drinking but is not harmful to humans when used for swimming or bathing is called by various names other than potable or drinking water, and is sometimes called safe water, or "safe for bathing". Chlorine is a skin and mucous membrane irritant that is used to make water safe for bathing or drinking. Its use is highly technical and is usually monitored by government regulations (typically 1 part per million (ppm) for drinking water, and 1–2 ppm of chlorine not yet reacted with impurities for bathing water). Water for bathing may be maintained in satisfactory microbiological condition using chemical disinfectants such as chlorine or ozone or by the use of ultraviolet light.


title: Water

text: Water reclamation is the process of converting wastewater (most commonly sewage, also called municipal wastewater) into water that can be reused for other purposes. There are 2.3 billion people who reside in nations with water scarcities, which means that each individual receives less than of water annually. of municipal wastewater are produced globally each year.


title: Water

text: Freshwater is a renewable resource, recirculated by the natural hydrologic cycle, but pressures over access to it result from the naturally uneven distribution in space and time, growing economic demands by agriculture and industry, and rising populations. Currently, nearly a billion people around the world lack access to safe, affordable water. In 2000, the United Nations established the Millennium Development Goals for water to halve by 2015 the proportion of people worldwide without access to safe water and sanitation. Progress toward that goal was uneven, and in 2015 the UN committed to the Sustainable Development Goals of achieving universal access to safe and affordable water and sanitation by 2030. Poor water quality and bad sanitation are deadly; some five million deaths a year are caused by water-related diseases. The World Health Organization estimates that safe water could prevent 1.4 million child deaths from diarrhoea each year.


title: Water

text: In developing countries, 90% of all municipal wastewater still goes untreated into local rivers and streams. Some 50 countries, with roughly a third of the world's population, also suffer from medium or high water scarcity and 17 of these extract more water annually than is recharged through their natural water cycles. The strain not only affects surface freshwater bodies like rivers and lakes, but it also degrades groundwater resources.


title: Water

text: The most substantial human use of water is for agriculture, including irrigated agriculture, which accounts for as much as 80 to 90 percent of total human water consumption. In the United States, 42% of freshwater withdrawn for use is for irrigation, but the vast majority of water "consumed" (used and not returned to the environment) goes to agriculture.


title: Water

text: Access to fresh water is often taken for granted, especially in developed countries that have built sophisticated water systems for collecting, purifying, and delivering water, and removing wastewater. But growing economic, demographic, and climatic pressures are increasing concerns about water issues, leading to increasing competition for fixed water resources, giving rise to the concept of peak water. As populations and economies continue to grow, consumption of water-thirsty meat expands, and new demands rise for biofuels or new water-intensive industries, new water challenges are likely.


title: Water

text: An assessment of water management in agriculture was conducted in 2007 by the International Water Management Institute in Sri Lanka to see if the world had sufficient water to provide food for its growing population. It assessed the current availability of water for agriculture on a global scale and mapped out locations suffering from water scarcity. It found that a fifth of the world's people, more than 1.2 billion, live in areas of physical water scarcity, where there is not enough water to meet all demands. A further 1.6 billion people live in areas experiencing economic water scarcity, where the lack of investment in water or insufficient human capacity make it impossible for authorities to satisfy the demand for water. The report found that it would be possible to produce the food required in the future, but that continuation of today's food production and environmental trends would lead to crises in many parts of the world. To avoid a global water crisis, farmers will have to strive to increase productivity to meet growing demands for food, while industries and cities find ways to use water more efficiently.


title: Water

text: Water scarcity is also caused by production of water intensive products. For example, cotton: 1 kg of cotton—equivalent of a pair of jeans—requires water to produce. While cotton accounts for 2.4% of world water use, the water is consumed in regions that are already at a risk of water shortage. Significant environmental damage has been caused: for example, the diversion of water by the former Soviet Union from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers to produce cotton was largely responsible for the disappearance of the Aral Sea.


title: Water

text: On 7 April 1795, the gram was defined in France to be equal to "the absolute weight of a volume of pure water equal to a cube of one-hundredth of a meter, and at the temperature of melting ice". For practical purposes though, a metallic reference standard was required, one thousand times more massive, the kilogram. Work was therefore commissioned to determine precisely the mass of one liter of water. In spite of the fact that the decreed definition of the gram specified water at —a highly reproducible "temperature"—the scientists chose to redefine the standard and to perform their measurements at the temperature of highest water "density", which was measured at the time as .


title: Water

text: The Kelvin temperature scale of the SI system was based on the triple point of water, defined as exactly , but as of May 2019 is based on the Boltzmann constant instead. The scale is an absolute temperature scale with the same increment as the Celsius temperature scale, which was originally defined according to the boiling point (set to ) and melting point (set to ) of water.


title: Water

text: Natural water consists mainly of the isotopes hydrogen-1 and oxygen-16, but there is also a small quantity of heavier isotopes oxygen-18, oxygen-17, and hydrogen-2 (deuterium). The percentage of the heavier isotopes is very small, but it still affects the properties of water. Water from rivers and lakes tends to contain less heavy isotopes than seawater. Therefore, standard water is defined in the Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water specification.


title: Water

text: The human body contains from 55% to 78% water, depending on body size. To function properly, the body requires between of water per day to avoid dehydration; the precise amount depends on the level of activity, temperature, humidity, and other factors. Most of this is ingested through foods or beverages other than drinking straight water. It is not clear how much water intake is needed by healthy people, though the British Dietetic Association advises that 2.5 liters of total water daily is the minimum to maintain proper hydration, including 1.8 liters (6 to 7 glasses) obtained directly from beverages. Medical literature favors a lower consumption, typically 1 liter of water for an average male, excluding extra requirements due to fluid loss from exercise or warm weather.


title: Water

text: Healthy kidneys can excrete 0.8 to 1 liter of water per hour, but stress such as exercise can reduce this amount. People can drink far more water than necessary while exercising, putting them at risk of water intoxication (hyperhydration), which can be fatal. The popular claim that "a person should consume eight glasses of water per day" seems to have no real basis in science. Studies have shown that extra water intake, especially up to at mealtime, was associated with weight loss. Adequate fluid intake is helpful in preventing constipation.


title: Water

text: An original recommendation for water intake in 1945 by the Food and Nutrition Board of the U.S. National Research Council read: "An ordinary standard for diverse persons is 1 milliliter for each calorie of food. Most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods." The latest dietary reference intake report by the U.S. National Research Council in general recommended, based on the median total water intake from US survey data (including food sources): for men and of water total for women, noting that water contained in food provided approximately 19% of total water intake in the survey.


title: Water

text: Specifically, pregnant and breastfeeding women need additional fluids to stay hydrated. The US Institute of Medicine recommends that, on average, men consume and women ; pregnant women should increase intake to and breastfeeding women should get 3 liters (12 cups), since an especially large amount of fluid is lost during nursing. Also noted is that normally, about 20% of water intake comes from food, while the rest comes from drinking water and beverages (caffeinated included). Water is excreted from the body in multiple forms; through urine and feces, through sweating, and by exhalation of water vapor in the breath. With physical exertion and heat exposure, water loss will increase and daily fluid needs may increase as well.


title: Water

text: Humans require water with few impurities. Common impurities include metal salts and oxides, including copper, iron, calcium and lead, and/or harmful bacteria, such as "Vibrio". Some solutes are acceptable and even desirable for taste enhancement and to provide needed electrolytes.


title: Water

text: Water is widely used in chemical reactions as a solvent or reactant and less commonly as a solute or catalyst. In inorganic reactions, water is a common solvent, dissolving many ionic compounds, as well as other polar compounds such as ammonia and compounds closely related to water. In organic reactions, it is not usually used as a reaction solvent, because it does not dissolve the reactants well and is amphoteric (acidic "and" basic) and nucleophilic. Nevertheless, these properties are sometimes desirable. Also, acceleration of Diels-Alder reactions by water has been observed. Supercritical water has recently been a topic of research. Oxygen-saturated supercritical water combusts organic pollutants efficiently. Water vapor is used for some processes in the chemical industry. An example is the production of acrylic acid from acrolein, propylene and propane. The possible effect of water in these reactions includes the physical and chemical interaction of water with the catalyst and the chemical reaction of water with the reaction intermediates.


title: Water

text: Water and steam are a common fluid used for heat exchange, due to its availability and high heat capacity, both for cooling and heating. Cool water may even be naturally available from a lake or the sea. It is especially effective to transport heat through vaporization and condensation of water because of its large latent heat of vaporization. A disadvantage is that metals commonly found in industries such as steel and copper are oxidized faster by untreated water and steam. In almost all thermal power stations, water is used as the working fluid (used in a closed-loop between boiler, steam turbine, and condenser), and the coolant (used to exchange the waste heat to a water body or carry it away by evaporation in a cooling tower). In the United States, cooling power plants is the largest use of water.


title: Water

text: In the nuclear power industry, water can also be used as a neutron moderator. In most nuclear reactors, water is both a coolant and a moderator. This provides something of a passive safety measure, as removing the water from the reactor also slows the nuclear reaction down. However other methods are favored for stopping a reaction and it is preferred to keep the nuclear core covered with water so as to ensure adequate cooling.


title: Water

text: Water has a high heat of vaporization and is relatively inert, which makes it a good fire extinguishing fluid. The evaporation of water carries heat away from the fire. It is dangerous to use water on fires involving oils and organic solvents because many organic materials float on water and the water tends to spread the burning liquid.


title: Water

text: Use of water in fire fighting should also take into account the hazards of a steam explosion, which may occur when water is used on very hot fires in confined spaces, and of a hydrogen explosion, when substances which react with water, such as certain metals or hot carbon such as coal, charcoal, or coke graphite, decompose the water, producing water gas.


title: Water

text: The power of such explosions was seen in the Chernobyl disaster, although the water involved in this case did not come from fire-fighting but from the reactor's own water cooling system. A steam explosion occurred when the extreme overheating of the core caused water to flash into steam. A hydrogen explosion may have occurred as a result of a reaction between steam and hot zirconium.


title: Water

text: Some metallic oxides, most notably those of alkali metals and alkaline earth metals, produce so much heat on reaction with water that a fire hazard can develop. The alkaline earth oxide quicklime is a mass-produced substance that is often transported in paper bags. If these are soaked through, they may ignite as their contents react with water.


title: Water

text: Humans use water for many recreational purposes, as well as for exercising and for sports. Some of these include swimming, waterskiing, boating, surfing and diving. In addition, some sports, like ice hockey and ice skating, are played on ice. Lakesides, beaches and water parks are popular places for people to go to relax and enjoy recreation. Many find the sound and appearance of flowing water to be calming, and fountains and other flowing water structures are popular decorations. Some keep fish and other flora and fauna inside aquariums or ponds for show, fun, and companionship. Humans also use water for snow sports such as skiing, sledding, snowmobiling or snowboarding, which the require the water to be at a low temperature either as ice or crystallized into snow.


title: Water

text: The water industry provides drinking water and wastewater services (including sewage treatment) to households and industry. Water supply facilities include water wells, cisterns for rainwater harvesting, water supply networks, and water purification facilities, water tanks, water towers, water pipes including old aqueducts. Atmospheric water generators are in development.


title: Water

text: Drinking water is often collected at springs, extracted from artificial borings (wells) in the ground, or pumped from lakes and rivers. Building more wells in adequate places is thus a possible way to produce more water, assuming the aquifers can supply an adequate flow. Other water sources include rainwater collection. Water may require purification for human consumption. This may involve the removal of undissolved substances, dissolved substances and harmful microbes. Popular methods are filtering with sand which only removes undissolved material, while chlorination and boiling kill harmful microbes. Distillation does all three functions. More advanced techniques exist, such as reverse osmosis. Desalination of abundant seawater is a more expensive solution used in coastal arid climates.


title: Water

text: The distribution of drinking water is done through municipal water systems, tanker delivery or as bottled water. Governments in many countries have programs to distribute water to the needy at no charge.


title: Water

text: Reducing usage by using drinking (potable) water only for human consumption is another option. In some cities such as Hong Kong, seawater is extensively used for flushing toilets citywide in order to conserve freshwater resources.


title: Water

text: Polluting water may be the biggest single misuse of water; to the extent that a pollutant limits other uses of the water, it becomes a waste of the resource, regardless of benefits to the polluter. Like other types of pollution, this does not enter standard accounting of market costs, being conceived as externalities for which the market cannot account. Thus other people pay the price of water pollution, while the private firms' profits are not redistributed to the local population, victims of this pollution. Pharmaceuticals consumed by humans often end up in the waterways and can have detrimental effects on aquatic life if they bioaccumulate and if they are not biodegradable.


title: Water

text: Municipal and industrial wastewater are typically treated at wastewater treatment plants. Mitigation of polluted surface runoff is addressed through a variety of prevention and treatment techniques. ("See" Surface runoff#Mitigation and treatment.)


title: Water

text: Many industrial processes rely on reactions using chemicals dissolved in water, suspension of solids in water slurries or using water to dissolve and extract substances, or to wash products or process equipment. Processes such as mining, chemical pulping, pulp bleaching, paper manufacturing, textile production, dyeing, printing, and cooling of power plants use large amounts of water, requiring a dedicated water source, and often cause significant water pollution.


title: Water

text: Water is used in power generation. Hydroelectricity is electricity obtained from hydropower. Hydroelectric power comes from water driving a water turbine connected to a generator. Hydroelectricity is a low-cost, non-polluting, renewable energy source. The energy is supplied by the motion of water. Typically a dam is constructed on a river, creating an artificial lake behind it. Water flowing out of the lake is forced through turbines that turn generators.


title: Water

text: Pressurized water is used in water blasting and water jet cutters. Also, high pressure water guns are used for precise cutting. It works very well, is relatively safe, and is not harmful to the environment. It is also used in the cooling of machinery to prevent overheating, or prevent saw blades from overheating.


title: Water

text: Water is also used in many industrial processes and machines, such as the steam turbine and heat exchanger, in addition to its use as a chemical solvent. Discharge of untreated water from industrial uses is pollution. Pollution includes discharged solutes (chemical pollution) and discharged coolant water (thermal pollution). Industry requires pure water for many applications and uses a variety of purification techniques both in water supply and discharge.


title: Water

text: Boiling, steaming, and simmering are popular cooking methods that often require immersing food in water or its gaseous state, steam. Water is also used for dishwashing. Water also plays many critical roles within the field of food science.


title: Water

text: Solutes such as salts and sugars found in water affect the physical properties of water. The boiling and freezing points of water are affected by solutes, as well as air pressure, which is in turn affected by altitude. Water boils at lower temperatures with the lower air pressure that occurs at higher elevations. One mole of sucrose (sugar) per kilogram of water raises the boiling point of water by , and one mole of salt per kg raises the boiling point by ; similarly, increasing the number of dissolved particles lowers water's freezing point.


title: Water

text: Solutes in water also affect water activity that affects many chemical reactions and the growth of microbes in food. Water activity can be described as a ratio of the vapor pressure of water in a solution to the vapor pressure of pure water. Solutes in water lower water activity—this is important to know because most bacterial growth ceases at low levels of water activity. Not only does microbial growth affect the safety of food, but also the preservation and shelf life of food.


title: Water

text: Water hardness is also a critical factor in food processing and may be altered or treated by using a chemical ion exchange system. It can dramatically affect the quality of a product, as well as playing a role in sanitation. Water hardness is classified based on concentration of calcium carbonate the water contains. Water is classified as soft if it contains less than 100 mg/L (UK) or less than 60 mg/L (US).


title: Water

text: According to a report published by the Water Footprint organization in 2010, a single kilogram of beef requires of water; however, the authors also make clear that this is a global average and circumstantial factors determine the amount of water used in beef production.


title: Water

text: Much of the universe's water is produced as a byproduct of star formation. The formation of stars is accompanied by a strong outward wind of gas and dust. When this outflow of material eventually impacts the surrounding gas, the shock waves that are created compress and heat the gas. The water observed is quickly produced in this warm dense gas.


title: Water

text: On 22 July 2011, a report described the discovery of a gigantic cloud of water vapor containing "140 trillion times more water than all of Earth's oceans combined" around a quasar located 12 billion light years from Earth. According to the researchers, the "discovery shows that water has been prevalent in the universe for nearly its entire existence".


title: Water

text: Water has been detected in interstellar clouds within the Milky Way. Water probably exists in abundance in other galaxies, too, because its components, hydrogen, and oxygen, are among the most abundant elements in the universe. Based on models of the formation and evolution of the Solar System and that of other star systems, most other planetary systems are likely to have similar ingredients.


title: Water

text: Liquid water is present on Earth, covering 71% of its surface. Liquid water is also occasionally present in small amounts on Mars. Scientists believe liquid water is present in the Saturnian moons of Enceladus, as a 10-kilometre thick ocean approximately 30–40 kilometres below Enceladus' south polar surface, and Titan, as a subsurface layer, possibly mixed with ammonia. Jupiter's moon Europa has surface characteristics which suggest a subsurface liquid water ocean. Liquid water may also exist on Jupiter's moon Ganymede as a layer sandwiched between high pressure ice and rock.


title: Water

text: Water and other volatiles probably comprise much of the internal structures of Uranus and Neptune and the water in the deeper layers may be in the form of ionic water in which the molecules break down into a soup of hydrogen and oxygen ions, and deeper still as superionic water in which the oxygen crystallizes, but the hydrogen ions float about freely within the oxygen lattice.


title: Water

text: The existence of liquid water, and to a lesser extent its gaseous and solid forms, on Earth are vital to the existence of life on Earth as we know it. The Earth is located in the habitable zone of the Solar System; if it were slightly closer to or farther from the Sun (about 5%, or about 8 million kilometers), the conditions which allow the three forms to be present simultaneously would be far less likely to exist.


title: Water

text: Earth's gravity allows it to hold an atmosphere. Water vapor and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere provide a temperature buffer (greenhouse effect) which helps maintain a relatively steady surface temperature. If Earth were smaller, a thinner atmosphere would allow temperature extremes, thus preventing the accumulation of water except in polar ice caps (as on Mars).


title: Water

text: The surface temperature of Earth has been relatively constant through geologic time despite varying levels of incoming solar radiation (insolation), indicating that a dynamic process governs Earth's temperature via a combination of greenhouse gases and surface or atmospheric albedo. This proposal is known as the Gaia hypothesis.


title: Water

text: The state of water on a planet depends on ambient pressure, which is determined by the planet's gravity. If a planet is sufficiently massive, the water on it may be solid even at high temperatures, because of the high pressure caused by gravity, as it was observed on exoplanets Gliese 436 b and GJ 1214 b.


title: Water

text: Water politics is politics affected by water and water resources. Water, particularly fresh water, is a strategic resource across the world and an important element in many political conflicts. It causes health impacts and damage to biodiversity.


title: Water

text: Access to safe drinking water has improved over the last decades in almost every part of the world, but approximately one billion people still lack access to safe water and over 2.5 billion lack access to adequate sanitation. However, some observers have estimated that by 2025 more than half of the world population will be facing water-based vulnerability. A report, issued in November 2009, suggests that by 2030, in some developing regions of the world, water demand will exceed supply by 50%.


title: Water

text: 1.6 billion people have gained access to a safe water source since 1990. The proportion of people in developing countries with access to safe water is calculated to have improved from 30% in 1970 to 71% in 1990, 79% in 2000, and 84% in 2004.


title: Water

text: A 2006 United Nations report stated that "there is enough water for everyone", but that access to it is hampered by mismanagement and corruption. In addition, global initiatives to improve the efficiency of aid delivery, such as the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, have not been taken up by water sector donors as effectively as they have in education and health, potentially leaving multiple donors working on overlapping projects and recipient governments without empowerment to act.


title: Water

text: The authors of the 2007 Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture cited poor governance as one reason for some forms of water scarcity. Water governance is the set of formal and informal processes through which decisions related to water management are made. Good water governance is primarily about knowing what processes work best in a particular physical and socioeconomic context. Mistakes have sometimes been made by trying to apply 'blueprints' that work in the developed world to developing world locations and contexts. The Mekong river is one example; a review by the International Water Management Institute of policies in six countries that rely on the Mekong river for water found that thorough and transparent cost-benefit analyses and environmental impact assessments were rarely undertaken. They also discovered that Cambodia's draft water law was much more complex than it needed to be.


title: Water

text: The UN World Water Development Report (WWDR, 2003) from the World Water Assessment Program indicates that, in the next 20 years, the quantity of water available to everyone is predicted to decrease by 30%. 40% of the world's inhabitants currently have insufficient fresh water for minimal hygiene. More than 2.2 million people died in 2000 from waterborne diseases (related to the consumption of contaminated water) or drought. In 2004, the UK charity WaterAid reported that a child dies every 15 seconds from easily preventable water-related diseases; often this means lack of sewage disposal.


title: Water

text: Organizations concerned with water protection include the International Water Association (IWA), WaterAid, Water 1st, and the American Water Resources Association. The International Water Management Institute undertakes projects with the aim of using effective water management to reduce poverty. Water related conventions are United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and Ramsar Convention. World Day for Water takes place on 22 March and World Oceans Day on 8 June.


title: Water

text: Water is considered a purifier in most religions. Faiths that incorporate ritual washing (ablution) include Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, the Rastafari movement, Shinto, Taoism, and Wicca. Immersion (or aspersion or affusion) of a person in water is a central sacrament of Christianity (where it is called baptism); it is also a part of the practice of other religions, including Islam ("Ghusl"), Judaism ("mikvah") and Sikhism ("Amrit Sanskar"). In addition, a ritual bath in pure water is performed for the dead in many religions including Islam and Judaism. In Islam, the five daily prayers can be done in most cases after washing certain parts of the body using clean water ("wudu"), unless water is unavailable (see "Tayammum"). In Shinto, water is used in almost all rituals to cleanse a person or an area (e.g., in the ritual of "misogi").


title: Water

text: In Christianity, holy water is water that has been sanctified by a priest for the purpose of baptism, the blessing of persons, places, and objects, or as a means of repelling evil.


title: Water

text: The Ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles saw water as one of the four classical elements (along with fire, earth, and air), and regarded it as an ylem, or basic substance of the universe. Thales, whom Aristotle portrayed as an astronomer and an engineer, theorized that the earth, which is denser than water, emerged from the water. Thales, a monist, believed further that all things are made from water. Plato believed that the shape of water is an icosahedron – flowing easily compared to the cube-shaped earth.