The activity

This activity should be completed after the beginning activity, featuring a video and accompanying questions.  In this lesson your students will be "travelling around the world", stopping in each station for 5 minutes to read about the specific situation and then provide their citizens with water by filling their cups to satisfy demand for the scarce resource.

The stations include:

• Nations with sufficient water supplies, generally fully developed nations but also many middle income nations.
• Nations with a reliable water source but not in sufficient quantities to satisfy total demand for the resource.  This includes some wealthy areas of the world such as rural Australia, as well as regions of the world where the population has grown at a faster rate than the economy’s ability to supply the population.
• Nations suffering from a scarcity of water, or nations that have adequate water supplies but are unable to access it as a result of political or economic reasons.

How the game works?

In the first station, representing the proportion of the world with ample access to water, students will be able to pour their water bottle (symbolic of their population) into a bowl with little effort.  This represents the the world’s population with plentiful access to fresh water supplies. Water conservation is something that you learn about at school, but rarely is it a consideration in your lives, except perhaps during a hot summer when you asked to limit your water consumption.  As a farmer you may be required to water your crops at night. 

This station will be equipped with the following resources:

• 1 large water jug representing the vast resources at this stations disposal.  This can be refilled on demand.
• 1 paper cup per participant, labelled either agricultural use, industrial use or domestic use.  These can be filled at leisure from the large water jug.  Participants can even drink their water and simply fill it up again. 

Reflections

What went through your mind as you poured water into the cups? Did you consider the idea that at some point the water supply may run dry?  What would be the consequence of spilling or even throwing away some of the water?

Station 2

The second station, representing a nation with access to water but not in sufficient quantities to satisfy total demand, the participants must prioritise which segment of their population (agriculture, industry, human) are most important to receive a portion of the limited resource, water.

This station will be equipped with:

• 1 large water jug which cannot be refilled and is sufficient to fill just half of each cup. 
• 1 paper cup per participant, labelled either agricultural use, industrial use or domestic use.  These are filled from the large water jug, which should contain sufficient water to fill around half of the cups only. 

The challenge will be to decide which cup gets priority – industrial, agricultural or domestic use?  Should the water be divided equally or should some sectors be prioritised? 

Reflections

How did you decide to fill your paper cups? What would it mean if you were only able to provide half the agriculture resources needed? (hunger, etc) industrial resources? (poverty, etc), domestic resources? (health, etc).  Reflect on the experience.

Station 3

The last station represents nations suffering from a scarcity of water, or nations that have adequate water supplies but are unable to access it as a result of political or economic reasons.

In this station, though students technically have enough water, they can not easily access it. Their "potential" clean water is sealed and prohibited while the resource that they are permitted to use is "far away" (on the other side of the room) and dirty. This symbolises the resources, such as underground water, that the population does not have access to for economic reasons. Further, they must carry an extra weight with them as they walk, individually, across the room. The weight here is symbolic of the physical burden of collecting water, while the individual walk, is meant to remind students of the vulnerability and dangers of the process.

This third station will likely simply run out of time before their water cups are filled. This is symbolic of the fact that people in this situation often don't have enough time to both collect water and earn an income.

This station should be equipped with:

• a sealed water bottle which cannot be opened
• a large jug of water filled with dirty water, placed strategically some distance away from the station.  This can be achieved by mixing some coffee or tea with the water to colour it.
• 1 paper cup per participant, which can be filled from the water jug, but only one cup at a time.  Each participant takes it in turns to walk across the room carrying the weight plus the single cup, before the next is allowed to complete the task.

After five minutes, have students stop pouring and give each 2-3 minutes to write down their observations and reflections, before rotating stations. At the end of the activity, a discussion of the concepts and challenges relating to water scarcity should be much more effective as students have experienced water scarcity in a more tangible way.