India’s civil society has opposed engineering-based water management such as large dams, river linking and canal irrigation, for environmental and social reasons, but often ideological reasons.
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Chetan Pandit, National Water Academy of India's Central Water Commission and Asit K. Biswas, University of Glasgow
India’s civil society, which for the past 30 years has been critical of India’s water policies, now has the opportunity to drive the policy recommendations for water management.
Seorang perempuan membawa air.
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When women have to spend hours getting water for their families, it comes at the expense of their incomes and their other contributions to their communities.
Quentin Grafton, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
Knee-jerk responses to water insecurity won’t fix the basin. The harder and longer path is delivering real water reform, including transparent water planning enshrined in law.
Instead of allocating the Nile waters based on a fixed, perpetual water supply Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt must consider changes in weather patterns, among other factors.
Beware cold-stunned ‘chicken of the trees.’
AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee
Green iguanas are an invasive species that seem to be spreading and proliferating in Florida. Used to warmer temps, they switch into torpor mode when the mercury drops.
Access to the shoreline is great, but what about places not on the coast?
Béju (Happy City, Street Plan, University of Virginia)
Research into public health benefits of integrating nature into cities has focused on green spaces. New studies suggest water features are just as useful and can piggyback on other infrastructure goals.
The Adelaide Desalination Plant will be cranked up to full capacity to free up 100 gigalitres of water from the River Murray for use by farmers.
Sam Mooy/AAP
The Australian landscape is very old and the soils in inland areas can be very fragile.
After years of delay, the New Zealand government is pushing ahead on a national plan to clean up the nation’s lakes, rivers and wetlands.
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A proposed plan to clean up New Zealand’s waterways draws clear limits on the expansion of dairy farming and irrigation, as well as on the use of nitrogen fertiliser in some key areas.
The receding waters of Lake Pamamaroo, in western NSW, in February 2019. Reduced water supply, due to lower rainfall and higher temperatures, has been the main cause of increasing water prices.
Dean Lewins/AAP
Neal Hughes, Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES)
High water prices in the Murray-Darling Basin are blamed on foreign investors and corporate speculators. The simple truth is they are caused mostly by lack of rain.
The white “bathtub ring” around Arizona’s Lake Mead (shown on May 31, 2018), which indicates falling water levels, is about 140 feet high.
AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin
Western states adopted a 7-year plan in May 2019 to manage low water levels in the Colorado River. Now they need to look farther ahead and accept that there will be less water far into the future.
Millions of women in Africa spend long hours collecting water.
Ollivier Girard/CIFOR
Any policies and interventions around water management can only really be successful if women are included.
Chemicals poured down the sink or pumped into the atmosphere can eventually end up in the groundwater, which means less available fresh water for us to use.
Flickr/Kamil Porembiński
While making small volumes of pure water in a lab is possible, it’s not practical. The reaction is expensive, releases lots of energy, and can cause really massive explosions.
A woman draws water from a hand pumped well in northern Ghana.
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South Africa is a water stressed country but crisis point can be avoided.
When a stream enters a culvert, the flow can be concentrated so much that water flows incredibly fast. So fast, in fact, that small and juvenile fish are unable to swim against the flow and are prevented from reaching where they need to go to eat, reproduce or find safety.
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