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Peru Plans for a $500 million water project in Peru could divert rainwater across the Andes from the Amazon Basin to the country’s dry coast, turning the desert there into farmland, Reuters reported. The Olmos Irrigation Project is slated to start in 2014, and is one of seven large projects Peru has planned to increase [...]
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South America Nearly 400 millimeters (16 inches) of rain pummeled Argentina’s Buenos Aires province, causing widespread floods, power outages and 31 deaths as of Wednesday, the Associated Press reported. The extreme weather has prompted calls for investment in public water infrastructure projects. Tensions are rising in the Brazilian Amazon between government forces and the Munduruku [...]
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South America A new billboard in Peru is creating fresh water from the air, helping to supply local communities, according to the Global Post. Though the area typically receives very little rainfall, the billboard takes advantage of the region’s high humidity. In an effort to clean up oil projects in the Amazon, Peru has declared [...]
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Seasonal migrations of poor, rural communities due to shifting rainfall patterns, droughts and floods are increasing, according to a new study by CARE International and the United Nations University, AlertNet reported. The study warns that the migrations could become more frequent and permanent unless action is taken to mitigate climate change or adjust agriculture to [...]
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Extreme Weather Suburbs, towns and farms outside of Rome flooded Wednesday after the Tiber River overflowed its banks and heavy rains backed up sewers and canals, Reuters reported. Widespread flooding has swamped Italy after strong storms passed through the country last weekend, killing four people. Farmers worry that increasingly frequent and severe flooding, coupled with [...]
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U.S. Drought Continues The drought has literally hit home in the rural Midwestern United States, where some citizens are turning on their faucets to find their wells have dried up, The Associated Press reported. The Missouri government will subsidize the drilling of new wells for more than 3,700 farmers and ranchers hit by extreme drought, [...]
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Large-scale foreign investment in Africa’s farmland is a threat to the continent’s water supply and water access, according to a new report from the nonprofit organization GRAIN. The report asserts that the global rush to control agricultural land is also a rush to control water resources. Rivers The world’s ten most populous river basins, most [...]
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A study by European scientists warns that large geoengineering projects, which have been contemplated as a solution to global warming, could create a 20 percent reduction in rainfall over the Amazon and a 15 percent reduction over large areas of North America and northern Eurasia, AlertNet reported. Reports: Unsustainable Resource Use A new study published [...]
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The connection between the Amazon River and its headwaters in the Andes Mountains could be partially cut by 151 proposed dams, according to a new study that is the first to look comprehensively at the ecological impacts of hydropower across the Amazon Basin, Nature reported. At least one natural gas driller has been forced to [...]
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New photos published on the Guardian reveal that early construction work for the controversial Belo Monte dam has already started in the Amazon, despite ongoing legal battles over environmental licenses. And there are already signs of deforestation. Australia’s water market has helped farmers and irrigators in the ailing Murray-Darling River Basin to weather drought and [...]
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Large-scale protests over resource extraction have swept the country in recent years, posing significant hurdles to a mining industry that is expected to bring Peru $US 50 billion in future investment over the next decade.
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South Australia has become the third Australian state to agree to the federal government’s tightened approvals process for future coal seam gas and large-scale coal mining projects, Platts reported. Water Security Germany has offered to help resolve the water disputes in Central Asia and to invest in water-saving solar and wind energy in the region, [...]
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Droughts and Floods Today’s must-read: Paul Salopek’s beautiful, poignant, thought-provoking account for Foreign Policy of his journey with the Daasanach nomads through the hunger zone in northern Kenya. Prolonged dry spells and droughts have threatened parts of China, Russia, Australia, France, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, the United Kingdom, East Africa and the United States in recent [...]
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As water levels dropped three meters (10 feet) in India’s Brahmaputra River, fears surfaced that China was diverting water near the river’s origin in Tibet, Agence France-Presse reported. The cause of the water shortage remains unknown. Africa’s Lake Chad is shrinking—it is now one tenth the size it was in the 1960s—but local residents have [...]
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Water-Food Continuing low water levels in Texas may prompt the first-ever restrictions on irrigation in the state’s major rice-growing areas, Bloomberg reported. Egypt’s slide from breadbasket of the eastern Mediterranean to net grain importer signals an economic crisis that threatens to shake the nation, according to The Washington Post. Brazil is planning a new grains [...]
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The U.S. government will require natural gas companies to disclose the chemicals they use in hydraulic fracturing on public lands, according to draft rules crafted by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Reuters reported. The eastern line of China’s South-North Water Diversion Project, which will transfer water from the Yangtze River Basin to the drought-prone [...]
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The International Energy Agency will make shale gas recommendations in its upcoming global energy report this fall, Financial Post reported. U.S. Shale Boom U.S. President Barack Obama pushed support for shale gas drilling and clean energy technology in his State of the Union address. Bloomberg gives the highlights. Meanwhile, North Dakota’s shale oil boom has [...]
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Chevron has filed an appeal with Ecuador’s Supreme Court to review a judgment that ordered the U.S. oil company to pay $18 billion in damages for polluting the Amazon, Reuters reported. Water Pollution The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will test the water at about 60 homes in a small town in northern Pennsylvania where residents [...]
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Closing in on nearly two decades in court, this “David and Goliath” fight seems far from over. Plaintiffs contend that no amount of money can repair the damage to the environment and to the lives of the 30,000 who claim to have been affected, while the U.S. oil company has denounced the Ecuadorean court system [...]
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The worst Texas drought in more than a century may cripple the oil- and natural gas- drilling boom in the state as government officials are starting to ration the water supplies for energy exploration and hydraulic fracturing, Bloomberg reports. The shortage is intensifying the competition for water between the agriculture and energy industries, as power [...]
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