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The salinity of Bangladesh’s water supply is increasing, especially in coastal areas, due to sea level rise and natural disasters like floods and cyclones, according to a World Bank study, AlertNet reported. Families in remote areas sometimes have to walk miles to get safe drinking water. U.S. Water Supply The final measure of California snowpack [...]
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Wine turned Peter Thum to water. While working on a project in South Africa involving two wineries, Thum saw the difficulties that many people experienced just trying to get clean water every day. “I did a bit of research and began to see the size and magnitude of this problem,” he says. So he decided [...]
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U.S. Drought The Food Price Index for December 2012, released yesterday, hit its lowest point since prices began to rally in June 2012, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The Index is a measure of international food commodity prices, and, driven in part by the severe drought in the [...]
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Pollution A pig farm in the Chinese town of Houtonglong has polluted water sources, created health problems, and made it difficult for local farmers to raise other animals, the Guardian reported. As China’s appetite for meat continues to grow, ban production at 93 iron ore mines in Goa, which were found to be contributing to [...]
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By 2017, coal will supplant oil as the world’s top energy source, the International Energy Agency predicted. In the next five years, the world will increase its coal consumption by roughly the equivalent of the U.S. and Russia’s combined consumption today, driven primarily by growth in China and India. Read a report from Circle of [...]
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Circle of Blue reporter Codi Yeager-Kozacek, a native Michigander now living in southern Alabama, is having her first taste of a hurricane.
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While almost everyone in the United States has clean, reliable drinking water, some people are left behind. And with the economy as it is and the cost of infrastructure going up, more may struggle in the future.
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San Francisco is considering an ordinance that would require owners of new and renovated buildings with water fountains to install special bottle-filling taps, according to Associated Press. The measure is part of the city’s efforts to increase the water supply in cities and rural areas across the country, Bloomberg reported, citing government officials. Heavy rains [...]
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The Czech Republic plans to set a two-year moratorium on granting licences for shale gas exploration, pending new legislation that will address the new gas extraction technique, Reuters reported. Almost half of the water companies in the United Kingdom will not be required to reduce their leakages before 2015, even though the country is in [...]
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Dams on the tributaries of the Mekong River could have a bigger negative effect on fish biodiversity and food security than the hydropower stations on the main river, new research shows, according to the journal Nature. Extreme weather and climate change signal the emergence of a new normal that increases the risks at the intersections [...]
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Energy South Africa may invest $78 billion in new nuclear power plants, a hydropower project and a coal-fired power plant in order to keep up with energy demand, Business Week reported. A European Union expert committee failed to reach a decision on a proposal that would label fuel from tar sands as highly polluting, pushing [...]
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China plans to quadruple its desalination capacity by the end of 2015 in an effort to relieve chronic water shortages that threaten to upend its economic growth, China Daily reported. Meanwhile, Jordan is moving ahead with its Red Sea Water Desalination Project, which will extract 1.2 billion cubic meters of water from the sea, of [...]
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A new study into the carbon footprint of shale gas operations adds more fuel to the debate about the technique’s environmental record, the journal Nature reported. According to the report, natural gas operations could leak enough methane to tarnish shale gas’s image as a cleaner alternative to coal. Floods Rivers in Bulgaria and Greece burst [...]
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Levels of cadmium, a carcinogen, measured 20 percent higher than the official limit in China’s Longjiang River, Xinhua reported. The pollution, which may have been caused by mining, spurred a rush to buy bottled water amid fears of drinking water contamination. Weather Extremes Floods killed 6 people in Fiji and displaced 3,500 following heavy rains, [...]
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Canadian and American advocates join to promote big oversight idea of the “commons.”
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The largest reservation in the U.S. has one of the nation’s highest poverty rates — more than 40 percent — and very little water infrastructure. Many residents pay nearly 50 times the municipal cost for water, which instead is delivered from a tank in the back of a truck, often resulting in water-borne intestinal illnesses.
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The world faces a wide range of serious, complex, and long-term water challenges, from shortages to contamination to local and regional disputes over water to long-term climate changes. But there are other challenges that are short-term, emergency situations that could also be addressed by some new thinking and new technology.
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Support for farmers in Africa dried up long before Somalia’s famine, The Atlantic argues, when international donors walked away from long-term agricultural-development efforts in the continent. Meanwhile, the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos said the famine in two areas of southern Somalia could spread throughout the region unless the humanitarian response grows soon. [...]
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An unprecedented drought, instability and higher global food prices are threatening famine and a humanitarian crisis in Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti, The New York Times reported. About 10-11 million people are in urgent need of food aid in the Horn of Africa as a consequence of the dry spell, according to official estimates. Meanwhile, [...]
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Posted on Wednesday, October 12, 2011
When I go to water meetings, there are serious scientific discussions about climate impacts on water systems, international conflicts over water, water quality and contamination threats, new technologies and strategies for providing basic water and sanitation for the world’s poor, and much more. But in the hallways between meetings and sessions, the real arguments are about the conflicts between public and private control and management of water.