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The Private Equity Firm Tapping America’s Spring Water
December 19th, 2023
Courtesy of Bloomberg, a report on BlueTriton Brands – a private equity firm that owns Poland Spring, Arrowhead and other bottled water brands. As it tries to grow, experts worry sensitive springs, creeks and groundwater supplies from Florida to California are paying the price: Ginnie Springs is a true Florida oasis. Ringed by towering cypress trees, […]
Read more »Key Climate Battle: Saving Himalayan Ice
December 19th, 2023
Via Nikkei Asia, a look at how – from Afghanistan to China – vanishing glaciers risk floods and drought for billions: Filmmaker and environmental activist Jamyang Jamtscho Wangchuk brought a bit of his beloved Himalayas to the COP28 climate summit in Dubai last week. Around 250 milliliters of it, to be precise. In a plastic […]
Read more »When Economists Shut Off Your Water
December 16th, 2023
Via Africa As A Country, commentary on water accessibility and pricing in Kenya: Access to water in Nairobi is horribly unequal. The World Bank, Nairobi Water Company, and development economists exploited this unjust context to treat poor Kenyans like guinea pigs. The following account is based on ethnographic research that Adrian Wilson, Irene Nduta, and […]
Read more »Who Gets the Water in California? Whoever Gets There First.
December 16th, 2023
Courtesy of The New York Times, a report on California which – as the world warms – is re-examining claims to its water that have gone unchallenged for generations: The story of California’s water wars begins, as so many stories do in the Golden State, with gold. The prospectors who raced westward after 1848 scoured […]
Read more »Addressing Groundwater Overdraft in the Sacramento Valley
December 15th, 2023
Via the Public Policy Institute of California, a report on ways to address groundwater overdraft in the Sacramento Valley: Although the Sacramento Valley has relatively abundant surface water supplies, groundwater is also an important resource for many of its communities and farms. In fact, one-third of the valley’s farmland depends entirely on groundwater, and more than half (60%) […]
Read more »Kabul Residents Endure Hours-Long Queues in Severe Water Crisis
December 15th, 2023
Via InterPress Service, a report on Afghanistan’s growing water scarcity crisis: According to United Nations statistics, nearly 80 percent of Afghan families lack access to sufficient water for their daily needs. Afghanistan, a landlocked country with limited water resources, is grappling with an exacerbated drought fueled by climate change, affecting the entire region. In the […]
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