BLOG
Water Grabbers: A Global Rush On Freshwater And Saudi Arabia’s Great Thirst; The Kingdom Stakes A Claim On The Nile
January 12th, 2013
Via National Geographic, an interesting look at Saudi Arabia’s efforts to utilize part of the Nile’s water: Papyrus reed boats cross the Blue Nile River in Ethiopia, where some people claim their water is being handed over to Saudi business interests. The cows appear on the horizon like a mirage. Drive about a hundred miles […]
Read more »Ethiopian Dam Threatens To Destroy Indigenous Livelihoods And The World’s Largest Desert Lake
January 11th, 2013
Via National Geographic, a report on Ethiopia’s Gibe III dam: Over the last century, the construction of big dams to generate power, supply water and control floods has unleashed a damaging cascade of social and environmental consequences – including the destruction of fisheries, subsistence farmlands, homes and communities. More than 470 million people around the […]
Read more »Regional Cooperation On Mekong At Low Ebb
January 11th, 2013
Via WWF, regional cooperation around Mekong River issues is at a low ebb at present: Ministers from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam meeting next week in the Lao city of Luang Prabang must put derailed decision-making on Mekong River mainstream dams back on track or risk sabotaging management of one of the world’s great rivers, […]
Read more »The Parched Tiger: Hobbled on Energy, India Ponders a Multitude of Dams
January 9th, 2013
Via The New York Times, an article on India’s growing water stress and its plans to construct a large number of dams to help address its watergy constraint: As we noted here last week, over 600 million people lost power in India last summer, setting a modern record for the number of people affected by […]
Read more »U.S. Water Wars: Supreme Court To Decide On Texans’ Bid For Oklahoma’s Water
January 9th, 2013
Courtesy of the New York Times, a look at Texas’ bid for more water from neighboring Oklahoma: A reservoir in southeastern Oklahoma in the Kiamichi River basin. Oklahoma officials have blocked the Tarrant County Water Authority in northern Texas from exporting water from the Kiamichi basin; the Texas claims on that water will now be […]
Read more »The Thirsty Dragon: China’s Aims To Have Mastery of Asia’s Water Tap by 2020
January 3rd, 2013
Via The Huffington Post, an interesting report on China’s thirst for Asian water in the years ahead: China has a damming programme for six of the world’s great rivers that rise in Tibet – the Indus, Sutlej, Mekong, Brahmaputra, Salween and Yangste – and feed by irrigation an estimated 1.3 billion people. The Mekong whose […]
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