Thirst

Balazs Gardi

VII Network

A worker rests on the lawn of the Emirates Golf Club in Dubai, UAE. Shopping centers and luxury hotels are built with wast and lavish water features, developers construct apartments with twice as many bathrooms as bedrooms, sprinklers pump desalinated water onto golf courses that evaporates before it touches the ground while underground aquifiers are being pumped dry in the region. THIRST Water is life, and since the earliest days of human civilization, it has also been the source of conflict. As global supplies of fresh water diminish, and human population grows, the tensions surrounding access to water are rapidly amplifying. Today, one third of the world’s population lives in water-stressed areas, and that statistic is expected to double within the next 25 years. Shrinking tropical forests, evaporating lakes, and the accelerating melting and cracking of the polar ice caps are only a few of the alarming harbingers of impending crises. My project aims to examine the lives of people directly impacted by these developments, to search for solutions and coping strategies, and to encourage reflection on an issue of global scale that requires concerted local action. This selection is covering a range of issues from Australia’s developed economy that is suffering its worst droughts on record and its consequences, to India where floods and inadequate water supply system, the lack of sanitation make the life of millions impossible, to the shocking waste of clean water at the sprawling developments of Persian Gulf kingdoms.

Balazs Gardi, "Thirst," in POYi Archive, Item #42616, http://archive.poy.org/items/show/42616 (accessed June 17, 2025).