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Turkey, Syria, and Iraq: Great Anxiety Downstream
March 18th, 2009
Via Energy Daily, a detailed look at issues related to Turkey, Syria and Iraq’s mutual sharing of the Tigris and Euphrates’ 303,000-square-mile river basin watershed. As the article notes: “…For Damascus and Baghdad, the bad news is that the Euphrates’ flow is 88 percent controlled by Turkey, 9 percent by Syria and only 3 percent […]
Read more »Lake Balkhash: A Future Aral Sea?
March 3rd, 2009
Via Registan, an interesting look at Lake Balkhash which – due to the international nature of the watershed, the development of oil in China and heavy industry on the its shores – may unfortunately be on track for a similar fate as The Aral Sea unless China, Kazakhstan and the other Central Asian nations work […]
Read more »The Great Lakes: An International Water Bank With Very Low Interest Rates
February 14th, 2009
Courtesy of The Vancouver Sun, an interesting article on a report that indicates even the Great Lakes aren’t great enough to sustain North Americans’ reckless water use in the event of a continentwide water shortage. As the piece notes: “…I think we have to stop considering the Great Lakes as the thing that’s going to […]
Read more »Two Rivers Diverted…. The Thirsty Dragon Has To Choose Both Paths
February 9th, 2009
Via Terra Daily, a report on China’s recent decision to divert water from its two longest rivers to help farmers hit by the country’s worst drought in decades. As the article notes: “…Water from the Yangtze River, the country’s longest, will be diverted to the northern areas of eastern Jiangsu Province, the Xinhua news agency […]
Read more »Central Asian Water: The Thirsty Dragon, The Aral Sea, and Ongoing Dilemmas
January 23rd, 2009
As we have discussed in this blog previously, Central Asian countries are divided into water suppliers (the mountainous countries of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) and water consumers (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan). But the Central Asian water crisis is not just about the fate of the Aral Sea. It is about the management of the entire basin, including […]
Read more »“The West Will Run Dry”: U.S. To Tap Mexico?
January 20th, 2009
Via The Denver Post, an interesting article regarding recent moves between the U.S. and Mexico to ramp up discussions over efforts to enable downstream states to build desalting plants in Mexico that could provide water, albeit expensively, to both Mexico and the U.S. As the article notes, they are also launching talks for Mexico to […]
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