A Fairlytale for the 21st Century

Ryan, Jimmy and the Waterwell: A Fairlytale for the 21st Century
At the Center for Water Studies, Saturday, October 13, at 10 am SLT.
Michel Manen, a lawyer in RL, will be talking about some of the legal and political issues surrounding water rights.

Why should you be interested?
All people must have fresh drinking water in order to live. Yet, a billion people do not have reliable access to safe drinking water right now, and that number is growing.

Delia Lake, Director of the Center, says: “If you are reading this message, it is likely that you reside in a developed country that has relatively safe drinking water at this time. But even for many developed countries, the water supply is not secure though. What would happen to you if your water source dried up? Or if you were denied access because a foreign country or a private company controlled your access to water? These are real issues and are already affecting real people around the world. It is time to bring these issues to the forefront of people’s attention. Please join us.”

What is the Center for Water Studies?
Located on the Better World sim, the Center for Water Studies is an area that focuses on raising awareness of issues concerning water. The Centre is a fascinating place to visit, as I discovered when I went there for the September issue of Prim Perfect (for the Better World sim is this month’s Sim of the Month).

The start of my exploration was marked by the presence of a humpbacked whale, and Delia suggested that we should approach the Centre by walking under the sea.

At any one time, she told me, there are at least six different water microhabitat builds at the centre (which is a lot squeezed in to a very small area). The builds at the water centre have plants and animals that could live together in real life, but which may not necessarily do so. The idea is to simulate natural environments, and also the way that species migration has happened in real life – which might sometimes have been because the plant or animal was carried by a migratory human.

We started in a warm water ocean area with coral reefs and fishes that like warm water. It was, I’ll admit, a little startling to come face to face with a shark!

Delia explain that people can scuba dive on the reef here and, indeed, there is equipment available for this at the centre. However, all of the habitat builds here at the water centre are ones that are under stress due to human activities. It is resilient, but often the tipping point into disaster isn’t recognized until after the fact.

My interest at this point as we continued our undersea stroll was somewhat diverted by catching sight of some jellyfish – which Delia identified as moon jellies and lion mane jellies – and a stingray (the Centre has a couple, and some batwing rays too).

By now we were walking out of the waves and up the warm water beach, as Delia explained that this was the warm water beach and that as well as scuba-ing, people could take out the surfboard that works with those waves. I popped back into the water for a moment and to my great delight found myself swimming with dolphins. Indeed, I actually seemed to be riding one particularly amiable dolphin for some considerable distance …

Once I had made my slightly sheepish way back up the beach, Delia explained to me how the Centre for Water Studies make use of their Second Life resource. “We have events here where we present on various important environmental issues and then have discussions,” she told me. “We have notecards about the environment in most habitat areas, so we have been raising awareness and educating. But we want also to inspire new research.”

On the far side of the island she showed me the north temperate zone beach and a temperate rainforest, for temperate rainforests are areas that are really under studied. In this are, the Centre has a pond that Delia is currently remodelling to add a beaver dam and house. With a smile, she told me that her grandchildren like it here as they watch over her shoulder, and wish they could come to Second Life to the water centre, or at least bring their school classes on a field trip.

Like each area in the Centre, this has both prey and predators in it. The heron eats the fish and frogs, while the frogs eat the bugs. There’s even a Canada goose flying above. I remarked on how peaceful it was – it was hard to believe there could be so much so close to where we were sitting.

As it is a temperate climate, the pond area changes with the four seasons. It is a good spot for small group conversations, or to just sit and rest. Two groups have meetings regularly at the water centre: All About Water and Planet Thoughts Environmental. They hosted a Live Earth event here on July 7, just as was done in real life but, as Delia told me wickedly. “BWI is a sim that has purchased solar and wind offset credits, so ours may have been the only environmentally friendly Live Earth event anywhere!”

(This exploration of the Center for Water Studies is part of a longer article on the Better World sim in the September issue of Prim Perfect).