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Rings Around Southwest’s Deepening Drought: The Noose Around the Neck of the Region?
January 9th, 2008
An interesting article at Modeshift examines further examples of the signs of a changing climate and an economy that has been slow to respond. Focused primarily on the U.S. southwest, where supply constraints are affecting multiple state & local jurisdictions, the report also takes a look at the U.S. southeast and the longing eye with […]
Read more »Turkey and Its Neighbors: An Uneasy Water Relationship
January 3rd, 2008
Via Terra Daily, an interesting report that Syria has been pressing Turkey to let more water flow into that country from the Euphrates river. Just another reminder of how fragile this region is from a geopolitical water resource perspective. As the article notes: “…Syria and Iraq often complain that their northern neighbour Turkey — with […]
Read more »The Aral’s Agony: Hydrocarbons (yes); Water Restoration (a drop in the bucket)
January 1st, 2008
A recent report at Energy Daily on the race to exploit Central Asia’s last significant body of water – the Aral Sea – from a hydrocarbon perspective reminded us that the Aral basin is perhaps the planet’s most damaged freshwater resource, a brutal legacy of decades of Soviet centralized planning. Thus, while the Aral’s waters […]
Read more »Geopolitics and Petropolitics Over the Caspian Sea
January 1st, 2008
Via John C. K. Daly at UPI, a very detailed analysis of the Caspian region. While the report is written from the perspective of the search for hydrocarbons, it offers a careful look at some of the very real geopolitical complexities – and long-term environmental & hydrological implications – that may arise over the Caspian […]
Read more »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, […]
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