Africa | Water News
Pollution, Dry Weather Choke the World’s Major Lakes
Written by Codi Yeager
Monday, 30 January 2012 17:34
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Urban waste and falling water levels signaled a rough start to 2012 for some of the world’s largest and most iconic freshwater lakes.

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Ned Breslin: Lessons From Polio
Written by Ned Breslin
Monday, 23 January 2012 09:00
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Mozambique Guitar Hero

One of my best friends fell victim to polio as a child, as he describes in this Frontline story from PBS.

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Water News: What’s Ahead in 2012
Written by Brett Walton
Thursday, 05 January 2012 06:00
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Panama is one of the fastest-growing economies in the Western Hemisphere, largely thanks to a new free-trade agreement with the U.S. and an ongoing $US 5.25 billion expansion of the Panama Canal. Slated for completion in 2014, the expansion will double the canal's capacity, which will reduce emissions, and the new system will recycle 60 percent of the water in each transit, along with an overall decrease of 7 percent less water than is used by the existing locks.

News headlines are often dominated by the big, unexpected events — BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, for example, or Japan’s earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear catastrophes in 2011 — but some events come with advance warning. Here is a preview of the water news to look for in 2012.

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Price Volatility: Food and Water Insecurities Require Deep Pockets
Written by Codi Yeager
Saturday, 03 December 2011 06:00
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Adding pressure to already strained budgets, the price of food is expected to remain high and quite volatile on the heels of this year’s extreme floods and droughts. Though price increases are occurring globally, they are hitting hardest in the developing world.

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Peter Gleick: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Water for Africa, and the Nobel Peace Prize
Written by Circle of Blue
Friday, 28 October 2011 12:28
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The remarkable president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman of Yemen for their work on women’s rights. This award is rightful recognition of the commitment and dedication of these women to strengthening the rights and dignity of women in Africa, and around the world.

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Water and Food Security: Somalia Famine Grows, Drought Could Ease
Written by Codi Yeager
Wednesday, 07 September 2011 06:01
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Somalia Suffers from Severe Drought

Meteorologists are hopeful for future rainfall, though they say the current disaster was preventable. The lack of rain, which is also affecting neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia, and political instability have tipped Somalia into a food crisis that could persist, even as drought conditions abate.

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Peter Gleick: Water as a Weapon — Qaddafi’s Last Desperate Gamble
Written by Dr. Peter Gleick
Saturday, 03 September 2011 06:00
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There is a long history of conflicts over water. The first known water war was nearly 5,000 years ago: a conflict over irrigation ditches between the cities of Umma and Lagash in ancient Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq.

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Water as a Tool of War: Qaddafi Loyalists Turn Off Tap for Half of Libya
Written by Brett Walton
Tuesday, 30 August 2011 15:48
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Libya aftermath - lack of clean water

Muammar Qaddafi’s great achievement of tapping desert aquifers and sending the water hundreds of kilometers to Tripoli, the capital, and other coastal cities is now the focal point for sabotage and siege. Aid agencies have begun humanitarian relief as rebel leaders try to gain control of water-producing regions.

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Video: Confronting Water Scarcity & Energy Demand in China
Written by Circle of Blue
Tuesday, 30 August 2011 13:58
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Choke Point: China Teaser

Choke Point: China is an on-the-ground report that displays in text, photographs, and interactive graphics the powerful evidence of a potentially ruinous confrontation between growth, water, and fuel that is already visible across China; a confrontation that is virtually certain to grow more dire over the next decade.

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From Coal Seam to Fracking, Unconventional Gas Industry Faces Opposition in Australia and South Africa
Written by Codi Yeager
Tuesday, 23 August 2011 07:35
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As an energy boom, propelled by natural gas, continues to gather steam, mining and drilling companies square off with landowners around the globe over who has the right to resources that are located deep below ground.

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