Honoring the Great Rivers - Global Freshwaters Summit
Virtual
April 19-23, 2021
Earth Law Center was a core participant and supporter of the Global Freshwater Summit held April 19-23, 2021.
Take Action
Share the press releases from Earth Law Center and the Missouri Historical Society.
Share the press kit from the Missouri Historical Society Mighty Mississippi Exhibit.
Our human story is, in many ways, a water story. Earth is a watery world thriving with myriad forms of life that depend on the essential elements for life, with water being among them. Water covers 71% of the Earth’s surface with 95% of that water held in the Ocean. Freshwater represents 2.5% of the Earth’s water, and two-thirds of that water is bound up in the glaciers and ice caps, leaving roughly .08% of freshwater for non-aquatic life, which includes humans, to share.
About the Global Freshwaters Summit
The Summit will underscore how the Great Mississippi and Missouri Confluence of Rivers, as Freshwater Biomes, are crucial to Earth’s resilience and regenerative power. The Great Rivers are among a minuscule cache of the Earth’s Freshwaters and are a primary source for watersheds in 32 States across America - from Summit to Sea.
For the past seven generations, the impact of humans on lands occupied by the First Peoples, plants and wildlife of North America is experienced and witnessed in cities, towns, farms and dwindling open spaces along the Great Rivers Mississippi and Missouri.
The choices we make impact the whole of life. As we now experience how an unhealthy Earth system incubates pandemic spread, we begin to understand that we must adjust our human presence to stop mindlessly polluting our planetary home.
The time is now. A clear priority in our future story is about WATER.
Yet far too many people cannot answer one of the basic questions of life: Where is your watershed? And What is the health of your watershed? Our inability to answer and connect to the life-sustaining importance of these answers fuels the pervasive disregard for how fresh and clean water impacts our life – and how we impact it.
Our work today is to highlight our responsibility to take stock of the condition of the rivers and waterways from Summit to Sea. The freshwater biomes represented by the Confluence of two Great Rivers in the heart of North America demanding our care and attention present us with an opportunity to forge a new social contract – one that calls upon humanity to meet and match the Earth’s resilience by turning towards the life-giving waters.