Water is Life
People, wildlife and plants depend on clean water. Without clean water, life itself is impossible.
Pollution, overfishing, mining and dams threaten rivers and lakes—and the communities and ecosystems that depend on them.
Millions of people only have access to polluted drinking water, sickening their families. Indigenous communities are losing access to traditional fishing grounds. Lakes are disappearing, goundwater is dwindling due to worsening droughts and excessive consumption.
We partner with community leaders around the Pacific Rim to safeguard our water for future generations.
- For me, this work is imperative. I can't not do it. I would be ashamed if something happened to Lake Baikal in my lifetime.Marina Rikhvanova, Goldman Environmental Prize Winner and Co-Founder, Baikal Environmental Wave, former partner from teh Lake Baikal area in Russia
- Every river needs a watcher.Tang He, Green Hunan, Water Protector and Partner in China
Helping Local People Protect Rivers and Lakes
Throughout the Pacific Rim, once pristine rivers and lakes struggle for survival as human activity is relentlessly encroaching on them.
Local people depend on healthy, clean rivers and lakes and are often their fiercest guardians. These waters provide drinking water and food, habitat for local wildlife, and space for recreational activities and relaxation.
Pacific Environment partners with frontline water protectors to design and implement community-led solutions that protect water bodies and the greater ecological health of the Pacific Rim region.
Trainings: We teach partners technical skills: how to conduct field investigations or get pollution information released to the public.
Legal Support: We train partners to use environmental laws and connect them with law students to prepare legal cases.
Citizen Networks: We train partners in community outreach to build ever-expanding citizen patrols that monitor and report pollution to the public and government officials.
Together with our local partners, we stop mining activities in parks and wilderness areas through field investigations and legal action.
We help partners bring some of the first grassroots-led public interest environmental lawsuits in China.
We build large volunteer networks that patrol lake shores and river banks and report toxic pollution to local authorities and the public to push for swift clean-up. One example is the network that our partner Green Hunan has built in China, which now covers all of Hunan Province.
We unite local and indigenous people against salmon poaching and establish local river patrols that collaborate with local police and park rangers to track down commercial poachers, seize their equipment, and bring them to justice.
We collaborate with business owners and local environmental protection bureaus to improve water, waste and sewage management.