Social innovation/entrepreneur expert David Wilcox writes for CSR Wire:

During 2011, Circle of Blue has collaborated with the China Environment Forum at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars to report on energy demand and water supply in China. Their extensive coverage and reporting included over a dozen presentations of the results in China. The context for this coverage—called Choke Point: China—is positioned as follows:

“Over the last decade alone, 70 million new jobs emerged from an economy that this year, according to the World Bank and other authorities, generated the world’s largest markets for cars, steel, cement, glass, housing, energy, power plants, wind turbines, solar panels, highways, high-speed rail systems, airports and other basic supplies and civic equipment to support a modern economy.

Yet, like a tectonic fault line, underlying China’s new standing in the world is an increasingly fierce competition between energy and water that threatens to upend China’s progress.”

Last week in Stockholm, the 23rd World Water Week convened and could have featured the tag line, Choke Point: World.

Read the full report by Wilcox here.

Students in Ball State University's immersive learning program work on a Circle of Blue project.

Kelly Shea, ’11, strives to make hope visible. The journalism graphics major led a team of Ball State students to develop information graphics for global news organization Circle of Blue, a consortium of leading journalists, design experts, and scientists dedicated to chronicling the murky intricacies of the global water crisis.

In fall 2010, Shea and a handful of her peers—mentored by multimedia journalism professor Jennifer Palilonis—created interactive graphics that visually convey the elaborate statistics and complex stories Circle of Blue has been reporting since its inception in 2002. The immersive learning experience exposed impassioned students to the demands of professional journalism and the significance of water scarcity on the sweeping political, social, and economic issues of our time.

Read the full story on the Ball State University website here.

SINGAPORE — WaterLeader, the journal of the Institute of Water Policy in Singapore, features a special Circle of Blue Choke Point: China essay and photography gallery.

The June 2011 issue is distributed to the estimated 14,000 attendees of the Singapore International Water Week (SIWW), the annual conference run by the Public Utilities Board of Singapore. It features “engaging and insightful” works that “reflect on various facets of Sustainable Water ‘Solutions for the Changing Urban Environment,’ this year’s theme for SIWW.”

The Institute says it “has quickly become a centre for conducting cutting-edge water policy research, education initiatives, and public dialoguing particularly within Asia, and increasingly around the world.”

In its Choke Point series, Circle of Blue found that demand for energy is testing water supplies and economic stability in the U.S. and China.

Download a pdf of the WaterLeader issue here.

Pure Michigan campaign highlights Circle of Blue headquarters city, Traverse City.

From Voice of America:

Cities and provinces along the Yangtze River in central China are grappling with the country’s worst drought in more than 50 years. Resource analysts say the drought highlights not only the impact of climate change, but also China’s persistent problem of water scarcity and how it must balance that with the country’s enormous demand for energy and economic growth.

…

Keith Schneider, a senior editor at Circle of Blue, an international consortium of journalists and scientists that focuses on global water resources, says water scarcity is a growing problem in China.

“China has been losing moisture steadily since 2000, according to their National Bureau of Statistics. In fact, they’ve lost 35 billion cubic meters of water annually since 2000. That’s 350 billion cubic meters in total for the country. And 350 billion cubic meters is a boat load of water. It’s as much water as flows down the Yangtze River and past Shanghai in eight months,” Schneider said.

From the Michigan Daily:

Members of the world’s two largest energy-consuming countries met at the University [of Michigan] this weekend to discuss and highlight progress in global sustainability and green technology.

…

J. Carl Ganter, director and co-founder of Circle of Blue — a group of journalists, scientists and data engineers working to fix the global water crisis — said he believes that publicity is necessary for people to understand why sustainability matters to them.

“One of the most important things when we talk about sustainability is we have to create a relationship of relevancy,” he said.

The full program is online here.