After Cape Town will a breakdown of confidence bring ‘Day Zero’ to Mexico City and Bogotá?
As climate change proceeds apace, more and more cities will face serious water shortages. Will they be able to cope?
controlling water supplies
The Taming of the Slough: Humanity’s History of Trying to Control Water (Episode 48 of Crazy Town)
What we do with water matters even more in the era of global warming. Can we learn to treat this most precious of resources in a way that achieves sustainability?
The real value of water
Even when we value embedded water as an economic good, we owe it to ourselves and future generations to treat water in a way that recognizes it first and foremost as invaluable.
Critics Skeptical as Alberta Reverses Course on Open-pit Coal Mines
After months of ignoring a grassroots protest movement opposing plans to allow open-pit coal mining in Alberta’s Rockies, Energy Minister Sonya Savage said today the provincial government made a mistake and is now prepared to fix it.
Rivers of Dust: The Future of Water and the Middle East
Whether nations will come together to confront the planet wide crisis is an open question. Otherwise, the Middle East will run out of water — and it will hardly be alone. By 2030, according to the UN, four out of 10 people will not have access to water
Wisconsin Groundwater Dispute Is a Warning Signal for the Eastern United States
Water problems in states east of the Mississippi River mirror those of the dry American West.
The global water grab
Writing in National Geographic in December 2012 about “small-scale irrigation techniques with simple buckets, affordable pumps, drip lines, and other equipment” that “are enabling farm families to weather dry seasons, raise yields, diversify their crops, and lift themselves out of poverty” water expert Sandra Postel of the Global Water Policy Project cautioned against reckless land and water-related investments in Africa. “[U]nless African governments and foreign interests lend support to these farmer-driven initiatives, rather than undermine them through land and water deals that benefit large-scale, commercial schemes, the best opportunity in decades for societal advancement in the region will be squandered.”