Water Stories comes to Sydney

For the past six years renowned photographer, Mustafah Abdulaziz, has travelled four continents to capture the global water crisis with powerful imagery, through the stories of people and their connection to our most valuable resource: water. For the first time ever he is bringing those stories to Sydney with the exhibition Water Stories throughout August and September.

The exhibit highlights the challenges of the water crisis but also the solutions being put in place by a US$150 million programme funded by HSBC to provide clean water to communities and the environment across the globe in partnership with Earthwatch, WaterAid and WWF.

Right now a quarter of the world lives in places under threat from lack of water, over 800 million people live without clean water and a further 2.3 billion live without basic sanitation causing considerable health and economic impacts.

But research shows that, to most Australians the importance of water and our connection to it in the global context is not always clear; a recent survey commissioned by WWF shows that the majority of Australians see terrorism, followed by unemployment and politics as the biggest risk to a positive, peaceful, thriving future, with water and food coming in last. This is in contrast to the position of the World Economic Forum that rated water as the top threat facing the planet over the coming decade.

“Australians understand water challenges due to the droughts and floods that affect our cities and rural communities alike, but might be missing how these challenges are interconnected to these very pressing geo-political issues as well,” said Dermot O’Gorman, CEO, WWF Australia.

“Water Stories shows how people in other countries deal with similar water challenges as us, but also with issues we are lucky enough not to have to face, like access to safe drinking water and sanitation,” said O’Gorman.

“The exhibition shows that the environment too needs clean water, with the world’s largest wetland, the Pantanal in Brazil, suffering very similar impacts as the Great Barrier Reef from polluted water coming from agriculture and tree clearing,” concluded Mr O’Gorman.

The artist, Mustafah, has been working on this project since 2011 and will continue until 2027. “I’ve tried to stress the interpersonal perspectives of people across the world … water is borderless and transcendent, affecting our health and that of our planet while binding us emotionally to the places in which we exist. We are a part of something large and cyclic and it is important to remember that we are, as a species, not the centre of it all,” said Mustafah Abdulaziz.

“It is my hope that these words and my photographs in Sydney will bring to viewers a level of lyricism and intimacy, so that they may walk through their gardens and be reminded that they are a part of something truly beautiful, grand and eternal,” Mr Abdulaziz concluded.

Martin Tricaud, CEO, HSBC Australia said, “Water Stories is a very unique project, and Mustafah’s efforts to collect and document the water crisis also illustrates the goals of the HSBC Water Programme. This is a global, eight-year partnership with Earthwatch, WaterAid and WWF to bring together our collective expertise and provide US$150 million in funding.”

“The impact since the partnership started in 2012 has been significant. Through the HSBC Water Programme, 1.5 million people now have access to clean water, and another 2.5 million have access to life-saving sanitation. Additionally, more than 170,000 people have been assisted to reduce their impacts through farming and fishing, and more than 527,000ha of wetland have been protected. At HSBC, 8,000 employees globally have been trained as Citizen Science Leaders, collecting data to contribute to ongoing science research projects related to freshwater,“ concluded Mr Tricaud.

The exhibition is showing at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney from 15 August to 5 September from 7am to 8pm. Learn more at www.thewaterhub.org/waterstories