Water and Sustainable Development

The United Nations designated March 22 as the World Water Day in Agenda 21 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992. The first World Water Day was observed on March 22, 1993. 22 years later, the theme for World Water Day 2015 is Water and Sustainable Development.

With a tag line "a day to celebrate, a day to change, a day to prepare," World Water Day is a day to celebrate water; a day to make a difference for the members of the global population who suffer from water related issues; and a day to prepare for how we manage water in the future.

Postcard US-2680017 to Australia shows a swamp view of the Everglades, a tropical wetlands ecosystem in South Florida. Sustainability was a major component in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan approved by Congress in 2000. A first-of-its-kind economic impact report has detailed the benefits of Everglades restoration that results in an increase in job creation, real estate values and water quality.

The theme for 2014 World Water Day last year was Water and Energy.

Everglades Wind

Postcard US-2651093 to Spain shows a colorful windy scene at the Everglades in Florida, from an original oil painting by Florida artist Mazz.

The Everglades are a large wetland area in the South Florida, where the Kissimmee River flows into the vast but shallow Lake Okeechobee, then discharges into a 60-mile or 97-km wide and more than 100 mile or 160-km long swamp. The southward slow-moving water, as writer Marjory Stoneman Douglas described as "River of Grass", eventually reaches Florida Bay in the south. It is a complex inter-connected and inter-dependent eco-systems that include sawgrass marshes, freshwater lakes, cypress swamps, estuary forests, tropical hardwood hammocks, pine rockland, and marine .

Since Congress formed the Central and Southern Florida Flood Control Project in 1947, the metropolitan areas in South Florida have grown substantially and near 50% of the original Everglades has been developed to farmlands or urban areas. There have been increased environmental awareness since UNESCO designated the Everglades as one of only three wetland areas of global importance in the 1970s. Restoration began in the 1980s and the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), a plan to restore the Everglades, was approved by Congress in 2000.

The postcard can be purchased at Zazzle and the original oil painting can be purchased at ArtistGalleria.com.