residents ask.] Sakina Mallah, married with eight children, and now living on the flat part of the land inside Manchar in a mud and straw hut, has just come back after collecting fodder for her cow and taking a bath.

“We’re like the fish, if you take us out of water we won’t be able to survive,” says Haji Allah Baksh, an elderly mohanna living on Manchar Lake. He says he doesn’t know any other way of life except fishing, making boats and catching water fowl, weaving mats from the reeds.

As you jump into his houseboat, filled with over a dozen dark-complexioned women, young and old, a few straddling infants on their hip, the first thing you notice is a neat stack of bedding piled up on one side. The miniscule cradle covered with a shocking-pink cloth hanging over your head is actually the place to keep the Holy Koran. On the far side is another cradle, slightly bigger, which is used for the children.

By Zofeen Ebrahim KARACHI, Pakistan -

 

Asian Development Bank - Issues - Water
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International Rivers Network

   By Ranjit Devraj NEW DELHI - Protests by environmental activists are building up on either side of the Palk Straits against a shipping channel that India will begin dredging this month along its international maritime border with Sri Lanka.    Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is scheduled to inaugurate the Sethusamudram Ship Channel Project (SSCP) in the third week of June. At a cost of 550 million U.S. dollars, it is expected cut sailing time between peninsular India's eastern and western seaboards by 36 hours and actual distance by 400 nautical miles. But for all the obvious advantages to navigation, the project, first conceived in 1860 by British naval officer A D Taylor, could imperil the delicate marine ecosystem that exists in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mannar biosphere system and the Palk Bay, say leading environmental activists in both countries.

KATHMANDU - Sushila Maharjan, 11, is relatively well off by Nepalese standards. Her father Dharma Ratna Maharjan, a businessman, owns a house in Kathmandu, capital of this Himalayan country. Still, Sushila's story can surprise most city children. As a five-year-old, she would carry tiny mugs and pitchers from her house to the stone spouts in her neighbourhood in Alokhiti, a village in southern Lalitpur district, and then back home several times a day.

DUBAI - Authorities and environmentalists worried about water scarcity in the Middle East have a new ally - religion. Plans are underway in Qatar to install water metres in mosques in order to keep a track on water consumption, whose levels in the Middle East is among the highest in the world. This relationship is not new -- Islam has always advocated the prudent use of water and other natural resources.

The Asia Water Wire (AWW), published and coordinated by Inter Press Service (IPS) Asia-Pacific, provides newspapers and other media users, as well as individuals and policymakers, a rich and regular news resource on a diverse range of water issues.

Many of the articles are the product of reporting on the ground, by local journalists. Some 300 of these journalists have participated in Water Media Workshops hosted by the Asian Development Bank in their countries in the last few years.

While the average person in Britain uses 135 litres of water everyday, the average person in the developing world uses 10 litres of water a day for drinking, washing and cooking -- the same amount used in the average flush of a U.K. toilet. Source: Water Aid (http://www.wateraid.org.uk)