How to create societal change: regulation/taxation, education or frightening and scary statistics?

Enough water to fill 150,000 Olympic sized swimming pools is pumped to Auckland residents EVERY DAY.  An even more mind-boggling statistic is while one person requires 2-4 litres of drinking water per day, it takes 2,000-5,000 litres of water to produce one person's daily food.  (For more scary statistics, see the United Nations-Water website (link below)).  With only 2.5% of the Earth's water being fresh, to me it makes water seem like a precious finite resource that needs to be treated with great care.

I'm not the only one: last Thursday I attended Late at the Museum, an event held at Auckland Museum in conjunction with the University of Auckland and the Aqua exhibition to raise awareness of water issues.  What struck me was the reaction by the audience during a panel discussion on the issue of water quality in Auckland.  Halfway through the discussion by the panellists an audience member spontaneously asked a question, opening up a flood of questions which were eventually cut off when time had run out.  The audience was obviously informed, frustrated and angry that (they perceived) little was being done to address the pollution of rivers and the effects of the urban environment on our water and its ecosystems.

So some people care and want to do something about water issues.  Others don't.  How to create societal change and get on board these people who don't care?  That seems to me the aim of our assignment.  NZ is perceived as a water rich country (as a classmate stated in my Sustainable Development class last week) - so why bother changing?

To create a paradigm shift in society's view however is very complex and probably a mixture of regulation, tax (I suspect people would consume a lot less if they were charged upfront the true cost of the capture of water in dams, transmission through many hundreds of kms of pipes, and treatment), education (although with the huge amounts of information flowing through our daily lives, would it stick?) and scary statistics and images.

My project is still being formed but I'm interested in the invisible infrastructure of water, particularly it's origins: in Auckland dams in the Hunua Ranges supply 57% of our water supply, 26% is from dams in the Waitakere Ranges, 10% from the Waikato, Mahurangi and Hoteo Rivers and the balance from groundwater supplies at various places around Auckland (including One Tree Hill).  How to map aquifers???

Perhaps if people had a simple way to understand the complexity of our water systems and the cost of receiving the water, they would not take it for granted.  Then those people who don't care may join those who do.  It doesn't matter for what reasons people change their attitudes, it's just essential that they do.

Thanks to:

Watercare (Auckland's water provider) for the Auckland statistics and photographs: www.watercare.co.nz.
UN-Water for the global statistics: www.unwater.org/statistics.html.
Auckland Museum http://www.aucklandmuseum.com/?t=1139.