“Conserve Water, Conserve Life” digital campaign to create awareness about the importance of water conservation when succumbed by drought
Introduction
Conserving water refers to the preservation, control and development of water resources, both surface and groundwater. Water is an essential economic resource on Earth that contributes significantly to socio-economic growth in Australia. However, fewer Australian households are taking the necessary actions to save water. According to figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS 2019) An estimated 54 percent take the required precautions to avoid the over usage of water in their gardens.
Water usage is increasing two times faster than the rate of population growth. Many people believe there is an abundance of water available for future use, but that’s not true. Only 2 percent of the Earth’s fresh supply of water is locked in icecaps and glaciers, and 97.5 percent of the Earth’s water is saltwater, and only 0.5 percent is available for drinking. Australia is the driest inhabited continent on Earth, and yet despite this scarcity of water, Australians are among the highest consumers of water per capita in the world (Williams 2012). Therefore, the over usage of water by Australians leads to difficult times for drought-affected areas such as Queensland and remote NSW.
All households should use water-saving products and equipment inside and outside the house to reduce water wastage. Policymakers should encourage the public and spread awareness and campaign for water conservation more often and introduce an educational approach in schools to educate children on the importance of water conservation.
Purpose of the “Conserve water, Conserve life” digital campaign
The “Conserve water, Conserve life” campaign is a promotional campaign creating awareness by educating families, individuals, and communities about the importance of conserving water, in particular, during tough drought seasons experienced by our Australian farmers. The campaign takes an educational approach to the public audience by providing dependable and credible statistics on a poster called “Conserve water, Conserve life” (https://m.facebook.com/Lets-Save-Water-Together-103749661080551/), creating a quiz called “Conserve water, Conserve life”, (https://qz.app.do/lets-save-water-together?from=page_wall) to gain an insight of individuals water-saving strategies or weakness in order to provide an overall consensus of how water is being saved from the results retrieved.
An interactive game called “Drought” (http://www.sploder.com/?s=d005it74) which displays a storyline of the impact drought has on farmland, and the importance of water conservation was also incorporated into the campaign to provide a further engaging aspect for the reader as a source of entertainment and digital engagement with the “Conserve water, Conserve life” campaign.
Reasons to Conserve Water
- Water conservation reduces the harsh effects of drought and potential water shortages. Although the need for access to fresh water sources is always an increasing demand due to the overpopulation and rapid industry growth, the supply we have stays constant. However, when the water eventually returns to Earth through the water cycle, it is not repeatedly returned to the same spot, or necessarily in the same quantity and quality. Therefore, by reducing the amount of water that is used, as a community, we can better protect and prepare against future drought years and make a positive contribution to the environment.
- Reducing water usage avoids continually rising costs and political conflict. In future, failing to conserve water can eventually lead to a lack of an adequate freshwater supply, which can have drastic consequences. These include rising costs, reduced food supplies, health hazards, and political warfare, such as imports and exports markets.
- Water conservation contributes to further the preservation of our environment. Reducing our water usage and water waste reduces the energy and emissions required to process and to reach families homes, businesses, farms, and communities, which contributes to a reduction in pollution such as emissions and conserve fuel resources.
- By reducing water usage on the everyday uses, it makes water available for recreational purposes. It is not only recreational activities such as swimming pools, spas, football fields and golf courses that we must consider. Much of our freshwater resources are also used for the upkeep of our surroundings, for example, watering lawns, trees, flowers, and vegetable gardens, as well as washing vehicles. Failing to conserve water now can further push the Australian government to restrict such uses in future years.
- Water conservation builds safe and beautiful communities: Farmers, Firefighters, hospitals, street cleaners, gyms, and restaurants all require large amounts of water to provide the necessary and enjoyable services to the community. By Reducing communities, water usage now means that these services can continue to be provided in the community and conserve life.
How can we conserve water as a community?
The best way for the community to conserve water consumption is through awareness. By educating others within the community about efficient water practices we are able to spread the necessary information to as many people and other communities as possible. The main aim of our campaign was to give the community tips and tricks on ways that they could conserve water from the comfort of their own home.
As a community there are a list of simple things that we could do inside and outside the home to save as much water as possible for those in drought affected areas that need it most. Finding opportunities to conserve water inside the home. Fix leaky taps as soon as the problem arises. Use water-saving shower heads, reducing up to 40% of water used from a normal shower head. Turn off taps when brushing your teeth or shaving. Always keep a cold bottle of drinking water in the fridge to reduce water wasted by waiting for the tap to cool. Only run full washing machine and dishwasher loads. Also, keeping showers short and sweet by keeping your daily shower to under 3 minutes.
Opportunities to save water outdoors. By applying mulch around trees and plants you are able to slow evaporation and decrease your yard’s water demands. Install rain catchers or barrels to collect and store rain that can be used at a later time to water the lawn and garden.
Water authorities should campaign for water conservation by providing some incentive to consumers, example discount on bills going down in comparison with previous months and people will save water to save money.
The effects drought has on our Australian farmers
Water is an essential ingredient for all Australian farmers and drought affects them and all Australians in many different ways. Water is used in all activities, we need water to live, for animals to drink, to the water garden and grow the food we all eat.
Water is also needed for washing dishes, clothes, cooking and showering. Even the electricity we use to run lights in our house uses water to generate power. When there is not enough water for these activities, then it becomes so hard for those people, their lives are disrupted, and some even commit suicide because they can not afford to make their ends meet. The town gets empty, and there is no business and it also affects the environment. When drought becomes severe, just like we are experiencing in remote Australia, the animals also suffer, their food supply decreases and their habitat is destroyed. In some drought, we recover, and in some, the environmental effect is forever, impacts such as an increase in diseases in wild animals due to reduced food and water, migration of wildlife, extinction of endangered species, loss of wetland, more wildfires, poor quality soil and erosion of land.
The worst drought in living memory is sweeping across all of Australia, leaving farmers struggling to cope with reasonable living standards. Record-low rainfall in some regions and successive seasons of above-average temperatures have blighted vast tracts of Australia’s grazing and cropland. With grazing pastures turned to dust and the feed costly, the drought is having significant impacts on livestock. With sources of feed being scarce farmers are being forced to have hay shipped in from the countries west or from the far north to feed their livestock. But this is not enough..sources are now being depleted, and desperate farm owners are being forced to take extreme measures to slaughter animals to keep up with demands, taking years for herds to recover. The cull will ultimately leave the size of Australia’s national herd at a record low, ushering in a prolonged period of livestock rebuilding and higher prices for the industry affecting all of Australia.
How “Conserve water, Conserve life” campaign can help our Aussie farmers?
News channels and newspapers show us pictures of dry, barren land for kilometres through Australia’s rural and regional areas. The malnourished animals and farmers desperate and they need our help. One person can not fix the whole issue alone; together, we all can make a difference by lending our hands and help them in any way we can.
Some registered charities are helping out our farmers by providing food hampers, care packs, stock feed and bottles of drinking water, or we can also help to buy a bale for cows.
We can help our farmers by buying Australian made products, and that will help indirectly to those who need the most. We should all buy vegetables and fruits from the local farmers market and not from big brand supermarkets. The farmers will be pleased to see people coming to their country town, meet with people, stay a night, do some shopping at the local shop, this will inject some funds in the business community and help them to make ends meet.
Audience engagement with “Conserve water, Conserve life” campaign
The Facebook campaign started very slowly. Most respondents
are not willing to dedicate their time and effort to answer survey questions unless they are rewarded with an incentive. The campaign page was created on Facebook and posted to a Facebook account, which was shared among friends. To engage the audience a fun game was also included for an interactive audience, but the audience is not interested in spending their time and effort on the campaign, they click the “like” button for the campaign page.
Respondents can become unforthcoming to reveal facts they do not see as helping a legitimate purpose. I had to explain to some the purpose for this campaign; it is fantastic to see hundreds of people commenting and liking my pictures but not my campaign page. Another factor that my friend’s lists are mostly working mothers and they hardly go on Facebook.
According to Pariser, personalized algorithms used by internet companies such as Facebook and Google only shows uses what users are interested in and remove opposing ideas or viewpoints. Pariser also commented that users might get different search results with the keyword and on Facebook users with same friends list can receive various updates just as my campaign might not be reaching to all my friends (Pariser 2011) This is due to filter bubble and internet company’s tracking what users want to see.
After Facebook wasn’t receiving the likes and attention we were hoping, we decided to jump onto another platform of social media. Instagram has seen user growth skyrocket to over 700 million users in 2017 from nothing in just the last seven years, and it is continuing to grow (Gallagher 2017). Brands are now seeing an average of four times the engagement than on Facebook, and this became quite evident to us when we compared our likes and interactions on our Facebook page to our Instagram account. Within a few days of creating the Instagram account ‘conservewaterconservelife5’ we had a following of 62 people and still counting!
We got the attention of others who had the same viewpoints on water conservation and received multiple interactions from strangers through comments, likes and tagging us in related pictures of their own, showing a positive response to our campaign and the message we were trying to get across.
Conclusion
Drought is a severe environmental issue faced by our country, Australia. The “Conserve water, Conserve life” digital campaign contributes to social change in relation to drought by promoting action and awareness to Australian communities through the engagement of social media platforms such as Facebook, Sploder (gaming platform), and Instagram in relation to water conservation proving to be a helpful contributor to drought-affected areas. Although the popular platform Facebook was used, it did not generate the expected results we were expecting. It appeared that not many users wanted to contribute their time or effort toward the quiz and game that were promoted. However, Instagram derived quick popularity among users generating 62 followers in a short period. However, the campaign could have used social platform Medium instead of Facebook to produce a better social interaction with users, which may have seen a more exceptional contribution of response to the quiz. Australia is a continent with variable climate change there is a need to educate the whole community to be responsible for environmental effects and future human needs, sometimes community education is neglected, and it is essential to revitalise the education program.
References
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