The Christian Science Monitor, May 15, 2008 edition.

Jesse Huffman

Most Americans can fill up a glass with tap water and safely drink it. But there are no faucets where Tantoh Nforba lives and works. He is from the Northwest Province of Cameroon, a rural region of Africa where the World Health Organization estimates that only 44 percent of the population has access to potable water.

The rest of the province’s 1.2 million inhabitants either drink from streams and lakes polluted with human and animal feces, contending with potential disease, or walk up to seven miles to collect clean drinking water from sporadically placed water pumps. The pumps are unreliable: Hard to maintain, they frequently fall into disrepair. And while water flows during the rainy season, many go dry later.

Today, Mr. Nforba has joined a global community stretching from the United States to Russia to Africa dedicated to making potable water more available.

On World Environment Day, Tantoh took action in his community by planting the words "CO2 350 PPM" on an embankment in flowers.

I designed this just two days before World Environment Day. Coincidentally, the slogan 350 CO2 was in line with the theme of this year’s WED. I organised a soccer match with another young environmental group in town, and we stopped by the site and talk about what I wrote in relation to the theme of WED. The match attracted many people from the village, and I had the opportunity to answer many questions about what CO2 350 PPM means.