Drink the landscape
We are used to have our daily drinking water arriving from the tap. As a result, we often forget just how directly we are connected to the natural source. What do we know about the journey that water makes? From its source, through collection and purification, through kilometres of pipelines, into your glass and eventually back to nature? And what if we looked at this journey not from the perspective of our human needs and infrastructure, but from that of water itself?
In Drinking Nature you step into the role of water and follow its journey from the IJsselmeer. Along the way, you experience the water system not as a technical process, but as a living, metabolic system. Water is constantly interacting with nature and soil, and with the organisms that nourish and purify it. It moves between plants, animals, other beings and ourselves. Even in the pipelines beneath our feet, that relationship with nature continues.
Because when you drink a glass of water, you drink the landscape. The quality of its source and the health of the ecosystem, through countless filters and detours, become part of our bodies. To eventually return the water back to nature again.
Water and nature under pressure
The availability of clean drinking water and a healthy natural environment is under increasing pressure. Climate change, pollution and salinisation are making it clear that the current system is reaching its limits.
As both a drinking water company and a nature conservation organisation in North Holland, PWN is working towards a future where nature is the starting point. Drinking Nature showcases the choices which have been made and the steps being taken to prepare for the future. It also highlights the lingering questions which can only be answered in dialogue and collaboration with other stakeholders in the water system.
Because creating a healthy living environment is something we have to do together. It calls for collaboration as an ecosystem; bringing together residents, farmers, industry, policymakers and water authorities, as well as the more-than-human inhabitants of the landscape. Drinking Nature invites us to rethink our relationship with water and nature, and together start a conversation about the future.
