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Asia’s Great Rivers: Climate Crisis, Pollution Put Billions At Risk
January 11th, 2020
Via Terra Daily, a report on the potential risk facing Asia’s great rivers: The year is 2100. The glaciers of the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region — the world’s “Third Pole” — are vanishing as the planet warms, the ice that once fed the great rivers of Asia is all but lost, and with it much of […]
Read more »The Thirsty Dragon: China Spends Record Sums On Water Conservation In 2019
January 11th, 2020
Via China’s Global Times, a report on China’s increased investment into water conservation projects in 2019: China spent a record 726 billion yuan (104.46 billion U.S. dollars) on water conservation projects in 2019, said a senior official with the Ministry of Water Resources Thursday. The country started the construction of 23 key water conservation projects and completed […]
Read more »The Thirsty Dragon: The Invisible Water Shortage In Hebei’s Capital
December 19th, 2019
Via China Dialogue, a report on why – despite the fact that Shijiazhuang in northern China is suffering from a serious water shortage – local people think otherwise: The stalks left after the soy harvest in the village of Tatou are still green. By mid-autumn, most crops in northern China have been harvested. But here […]
Read more »The Thirsty Dragon: Southern China Experiences Another Severe Drought
November 12th, 2019
Via Future Directions International, a report on another drought in China: Water is described as China’s Achilles heel. It is ‘the most long-term and fundamental of China’s vulnerabilities … China has failed to secure a sufficient amount and quality of water for its citizens, leading to an “absolute scarcity” of the resource’. The drier than normal […]
Read more »How Climate Change, Dams, and Geopolitics Threaten The Mekong’s Future
November 7th, 2019
Via Foreign Affairs, an article on the troubles facing the Mekong River: On October 29, Laos unveiled a new dam in the country’s north. The 1.3-gigawatt Xayaburi dam sits on the Mekong River, which flows the length of the country. Laos plans to build nearly a hundred like it by 2020—many with direct funding and […]
Read more »The Thirsty Dragon and Parched Tiger: Tibet’s Rivers Will Determine Asia’s Future
November 3rd, 2019
Via The Diplomat, a look at the dawn of a new era of building dams on the Yarlung Tsangpo, where countless lives and ecosystems are being risked in the name of “development” and geopolitics: Over the last seven decades, the People’s Republic of China has constructed more than 87,000 dams. Collectively they generate 352.26 GW of […]
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