The Outback covers 70% of Australia, and its water is precious and scarce. Yet there is no joined-up plan to monitor and manage Outback water, despite the wealth of species and communities that depend on it.
Southern Africa has rivers, like the Zambezi, that run through a number of countries. How best to manage this is the challenge.
Goran Tomasevic/Reuters
Southern African countries do not face water scarcity and do not need to build joint water projects. But they do need talk to each other to avoid misunderstandings.
Water makes all the difference for agricultural crops.
US Geological Survey
The majority of water that people use goes to agriculture. In a drier, hungrier future, we’ll need to use what water we have with less waste. Technologies being developed now will help.
Unless water is governed properly, the African continent will face massive problems in the coming years.
EPA/JIM HOLLANDER
As all good Monty Python fans know, water technologies feature large in the legacy of benefits left by Roman civilisation. But while aqueducts, sewers and baths retain an obvious presence in the landscape…
The amount of water at the Earth’s surface is pretty constant, but in many parts of the developed world we are running out of the right sort of water, and our ability to access it. The severe water shortages…
Australia leads the world in water accounting standards, but this is at risk.
Flickr/Chris Morin
As part of its budget cuts, the federal government plans to disband the Water Accounting Standards Board, which looks after water accounting. But is this leaving business high and dry? Water accounting…
Keeping the taps running for all.
Steve A Johnson/Flickr
A petition on the human right to water, signed by 1.8m people across Europe, was presented last month in Brussels. The petition called on the European Commission to recognise the UN resolution that water…
There’s been much debate this past month about Britain’s rising gas and electricity bills. Price hikes have followed utility companies’ reports of massive increases in profits, such as Scottish Power which…
The release of a Senate report into a Commonwealth water trigger marks another chapter in a debate that has simmered and bubbled for 30 years in Australia. The report recommends that the main Commonwealth…
The Barmah-Milewa forest is an ephemeral landscape of unique biodiversity.
Flickr/Parks Victoria.
Australia is famous for its natural beauty: the Great Barrier Reef, Uluru, Kakadu, the Kimberley. But what about the places almost no one goes? We asked ecologists, biologists and wildlife researchers…
Lake Eyre has only filled three times in the last 150 years.
NASA/Lake Eyre
Australia is famous for its natural beauty: the Great Barrier Reef, Uluru, Kakadu, the Kimberley. But what about the places almost no one goes? We asked ecologists, biologists and wildlife researchers…
Take care! The precautionary principle can only go so far without data to rely on.
Jeremy Buckingham
Yesterday, the Federal government issued new recommendations for methods to estimate emissions from conventional gas and from coal seam gas production. So what did we learn? The proposals seek to refine…
The Great Artesian Basin, characterised by iconic springs such as the Blanche Cup Mound Spring in outback South Australia, provides groundwater to four states.
Greg Rinder, CSIRO
The Great Artesian Basin is huge and ancient underground “water tank” big enough to fill Sydney Harbour 130,000 times. It streches from Cape York down to Dubbo and further west than Coober Pedy and has…
Solving Western Australia’s water crisis has been an ongoing issue for Liberal and Labor state governments.
Steven McGuinnity
Ten years have passed since the 2005 Western Australian election, when the state’s battle lines were drawn over Perth’s water future. Geoff Gallop’s Labor party argued for desalination or the Southwest…