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Laos as Southeast Asia’s Battery – Too Many Contact Points?
January 1st, 2008
Via Terra Daily, interesting details of the plans of mountainous Laos, one of Asia’s poorest nations, to exploit its hydropower potential to become the “battery of Southeast Asia” and sell electricity to its more industrialised neighbours Vietnam and Thailand. While the focus of the article is primarily over the potential environmental and freshwater impact a […]
Read more »Water in the West: An ‘Agreement to Share Adversity’
December 15th, 2007
As reported in the Los Angeles Times, the federal government – faced with the eighth year of the worst drought in the century-long historic record of the Colorado River – recently adopted new guidelines on managing the Western United States’ most important water source to help avoid disputes between the seven basin states of Wyoming, […]
Read more »Go West (for water), young man…
December 15th, 2007
As The Economist recently noted, America’s West – gripped by drought – is rethinking how it uses water. As the article notes, seven states, as well as northern Mexico, rely on the Colorado River and are quickly coming to the realization that things have changed: “This is not a normal drought,†says Pat Mulroy of […]
Read more »Like Oil & Water: The Middle East and Sustainable Water Solutions
December 9th, 2007
As reported by TreeHugger, the Arab League tossed cold water on a UN proposal to set up a Middle East environmental training center focused on sustainable water solutions during a meeting in Cairo in which the 22 members of the Arab League discussed the effects of climate change on the Middle East. As the report […]
Read more »A Mother’s Milk (River): Down to A Trickle but Still Causing Waves
December 7th, 2007
Along the normally placid U.S./Canadian border, American officials are causing waves by contending that the U.S. is not getting its adequate share from the Milk and St. Mary’s Rivers which flow into the Canadian province of Alberta. As the Calgary Herald noted recently, this argument is not just about competing claims between Montana and Alberta, […]
Read more »The Thirsty Dragon: Pitting Farmers vs. City Dwellers and Planning an Olympic Shower
December 6th, 2007
Via JapanFocus, a provocative and insightful piece by Dai Qing (a writer and an activist who has long fought the Three Gorge dam project), regarding China’s impending water crisis and – more importantly – the class divisions it will foment as wealthy urban dwellers demand more water from poor rural Chinese. This powerful review corresponded […]
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