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The Thirsty Dragon: What If Water Shortages Destabilize China?
July 11th, 2020
Via The Economist, an imagined scenario from 2050 in which the painfully unequal distribution of water in China reawakens intra-regional resentments not seen in decades: The deadly heatwave that has gripped Asia for five months has had many unexpected consequences. One of the more surprising has been Chinese political and business leaders feuding, semi-publicly, about […]
Read more »In Parched US Southwest, Warm Spring Renews Threat of ‘Megadrought’
July 11th, 2020
Via The New York Times, an article on the US Southwest’s drought concerns: Here at 12,000 feet on the Continental Divide, only vestiges of the winter snowpack remain, scattered white patches that have yet to melt and feed the upper Colorado River, 50 miles away. That’s normal for mid-June in the Rockies. What’s unusual this […]
Read more »The Thirsty Dragon and Parched Tiger: Tensions with China-Pakistan Can Derail India’s Fragile Water Treaties
July 11th, 2020
Via The Print, commentary on how the recent tension with Nepal, misunderstanding with Bhutan and border clash with China show that India can no longer create policy of long-term water security in isolation: As India’s neighbourhood goes through a turmoil, with underlying fault lines exposed by the coronavirus pandemic and a deepening economic crisis, there is […]
Read more »Drought Lays Bare Morocco’s Vulnerabilities
July 8th, 2020
Courtesy of STRATFOR (subscription required), a look at how drought impacts Morocco: While declining rainfall is a problem across the Maghreb region of northwest Africa, this year’s ongoing spring and summer drought is hitting Morocco’s agricultural sector particularly hard. The drought will weaken the strategic objectives of the Moroccan government’s agricultural investment plan, which prioritizes […]
Read more »The Parched Tiger: Pipe Dreams – Why Interlinking Ken-Betwa Will Not Solve Bundelkhand’s Water Crisis
July 4th, 2020
Via IndiaSpend, a report on Each day, Gulab Singh, a 55-year-old farmer from Uttar Pradesh’s Banda district, asks himself if he made the right choice. A devastating drought hit his home in the central Indian region of Bundelkhand around a decade ago. Stretching over three years from 2005 to 2008, it dried the region’s wells, […]
Read more »The Rio Grande: A River Runs Dry
July 4th, 2020
Via New Mexico Political Report, an article on the Rio Grande: Albuquerque residents coping with the COVID-19 pandemic have flocked to the Rio Grande this spring and summer in droves, said John Fleck, director of the Water Resources Program at the University of New Mexico. “What we’re seeing in Albuquerque is stunning. People are in […]
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