The Chinese government is fighting a war on pollution on multiple fronts to protect its air, water, and soil. Despite passage of the stringent Water Ten Plan in 2015, water quality still has not met anticipated targets in one-third of the country. But one Chinese pollution control success story was Beijing’s investments in municipal wastewater treatment plants in the run up to the 2008 Olympics. 

Trouble is brewing on the Nile. For years, use of the river was mainly about the needs of Egypt, by far the largest and most powerful riparian country in the basin. But since the Arab Spring of 2011, the situation has changed considerably. Egypt’s troubles over the last decade have weakened its ability to project power southward, while upper riparian states—Ethiopia in particular—have enjoyed a period of economic growth and relative stability, which has led them to look at the great river as an important national resource. Tensions have come to a head since Ethiopia announced the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), construction of which is now almost complete. Once full, the resulting reservoir will be larger than the whole of Greater London. Much of the water it holds would have previously reached Sudan and Egypt largely unhindered.

As the COVID-19 crisis grew this spring, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) revamped its Water Office, renamed it as the Center for Water Security, Sanitation, and Hygiene, and added it to the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security, home to the Feed the Future Initiative.

Placing the Center for Water Security in the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security was a strategic shift. With 70 percent of freshwater use designated for agriculture, this move elevates water as an integral component of resilience and food security. Referencing water security in the Center’s name also highlights the need for water supplies to be managed sustainably and the role that water plays in resilience and peace. 

Few places have suffered more from the COVID-19 pandemic than southern China, the region where the novel coronavirus was first detected in the city of Wuhan. But it turned out that the pandemic is not the only calamity to befall south China this year. The region has been inundated by heavy rainfall since late May, creating a risk of catastrophic flooding. While southern China typically sees heavy rainfall in the summer months, state media reported that this year’s precipitation has been roughly 20 percent higher than normal. Other outlets report that flooding has affected over 30 million people across dozens of provinces and resulted in over 120 deaths. 

The global coronavirus pandemic, now in its third month, is precipitating a financial crisis for water utilities in low- and middle-income countries as many of these service providers face drastic cuts in revenue and rising costs to respond to the public health emergency.

Development specialists are sounding the alarm. The pandemic will not be stopped unless we provide safe water to the world’s most vulnerable people, according to UN experts. Soap and clean water are part of the arsenal of weapons we can deploy on the frontlines of the battle to halt the virus’ spread. Yet Covid-19 continues to pose an unprecedented threat to more than 2 billion of the world’s poorest people who lack the access to safe water, sanitation, and health services (WASH) needed to protect them during infectious disease outbreaks, according to the World Health Organization.

As the humanitarian community responds to the Covid-19 pandemic, other long-term pressing priorities persist and require innovative solutions. The dry zone which extends across Central America encompassing parts of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua and a 10-year drought has left 1.4 million people in urgent need of food assistance. The impact of climate change, which includes extreme drought, poses an ever-increasing risk across Central America and contributes not only to food insecurity but also to migration issues that have plagued the continent in recent years.