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Why Your Swimming Pool May Be Worse for Urban Water Scarcity Than Climate Change
April 15th, 2023
Courtesy of Inside Climate News, a report on a new study that found that wealthy lifestyle habits, including watering gardens and filling pools, can contribute to water shortages in cities as much or more than climate-driven drought: An aerial view of homes in one of the many cities in Southern California where residents will be […]
Read more »More Than a Decade of Megadrought Brought a Summer of Megafires to Chile
April 15th, 2023
Via Inside Climate News, a report on how Chile’s relentless drought has dried out subsistence farmers’ wells, vast eucalyptus and pine plantations: As the dark curtain descended, turning the blazing afternoon sun over the braided currents of the Bío Bío River into a burnt orange twilight, a firefighting helicopter with a gigantic bucket dangling below […]
Read more »Dam-nation: Recent Earthquakes Have Shaken Middle Eastern Confidence In Dams
April 15th, 2023
Via The Economist, a report on how February’s earthquakes have damaged the Middle East’s dams: The Turkish authorities announced on March 30th that 140 dams had been inspected since two earthquakes hit southern Turkey and northern Syria in February. None, they insisted, was seriously damaged. Still, many in the Middle East remain fearful about the […]
Read more »No Mainstream: The Mekong’s Competing Definitions
April 15th, 2023
Courtesy of The Diplomat, an article on how – both within and between nations – Southeast Asia’s largest river gives rise to competing, and in some cases conflicting, notions: Last September, during a Thailand-Australia Policy Dialogue organized by the Asia Foundation and the Australian National University in Canberra, I was reminded of the ice-breaking exercise […]
Read more »California’s Groundwater Gold Rush
April 13th, 2023
Courtesy of Bloomberg, a look at how banks, pension funds and insurers have been turning California’s scarce water into enormous profits, leaving people with less to drink: As storms battered California in March, the state’s inland breadbasket erupted with almond blossoms. It happens every year. The Central Valley—the source of 40% of America’s fruit and […]
Read more »Egypt Powerless Against Ethiopia and Its Dam
April 12th, 2023
Courtesy of The Africa Report, a look at the latest controversy over the GERD: Ethiopia is preparing to launch the fourth and final phase of filling the Renaissance Dam… without consultation or agreement with Sudan and Egypt, located downstream. On 24 March, Ethiopia announced that 90% of its Renaissance Dam project would be completed during […]
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