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Limited Water for Unlimited Development: Q&A With Shaofeng Jia
›A quarter of the coal that powers China’s economy is mined in Inner Mongolia, one of the country’s most water-scarce provinces with only slightly under two percent of China’s total water resources. The coal-rich city of Ordos, which produces nearly 70 percent of all the coal in Inner Mongolia, is bookended by expanding deserts—Kubuqi to the north and Maowushu to the south—and may one day run out of water and face a “Day Zero” like Cape Town in South Africa. Both the central and local governments are promoting a number of efforts to create new water supplies in Ordos, such as treating brackish waters and trading water rights. To learn more, the China Energy & Environment Forum recently interviewed Shaofeng Jia, the Deputy Director of Water Resources Research Center at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who recently completed an extensive study on water-energy confrontations in Inner Mongolia.
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Sustainable Water, Resilient Communities: The Challenge of Erratic Water
›From the Wilson Center // Water Security for a Resilient World // June 7, 2018 // By Rebecca LorenzenWater variability is increasing “due to climate change and to more frequent natural disasters,” said Jonathan Cook, Senior Climate Change Adaptation Specialist with the U.S. Agency for International Development, at the fourth and final event in a series on water security organized by the Wilson Center and the Sustainable Water Partnership. To solve the problem of increasingly erratic water, “business as usual is really not acceptable anymore,” said Will Sarni, founder of WetDATA.org, who called for new, innovative ideas: “Hope is not a strategy.”
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The Water Wars Within: Preventing Subnational Water Conflicts
›In 1995, World Bank official Ismail Serageldin warned that “the wars of the next century will be fought over water—unless we change our approach to managing this precious and vital resource.” Since then, the world’s water resources have come under ever-greater strain. At the same time, institutional frameworks for managing water resources remain weak throughout most of the globe. Only about a quarter of the world’s international river basins have adequate governance arrangements to prevent and resolve conflicts. Does this mean that we can expect the 21st century to be wracked by water wars?
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A Watershed Moment for Iraqi Kurdistan: Subnational Hydropolitics and Regional Stability
›Iraqi Kurdistan is blessed with abundant water resources, but these resources are under increasing stress. Changing demographics, dam building in neighboring countries, and drought have driven Kurdish hydropolitics to a critical juncture where two distinct water futures are possible—and both have implications for regional stability and for U.S. interests.
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New Global Analysis Finds Water-Related Terrorism Is On the Rise
›In 2014, after losing a number of Somalian cities it had captured to African Union and Somali troops, the terrorist group Al-Shabaab changed its tactics. To demonstrate its continued power and presence, Al-Shabaab cut off water supplies to its formerly held cities. Residents from these cut-off cities were forced to fetch water from nearby towns, many of which Al-Shabaab controlled. But the terror group prevented anyone living in government-controlled territory from entering, which increased people’s frustration with the government.
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Sustainable Water, Resilient Communities: The Unique Challenges and Opportunities of Wastewater
›From the Wilson Center // Water Security for a Resilient World // April 27, 2018 // By Connor Chapkis“Globally, nearly one billion people still lack access to safe water,” said Sasha Koo-Oshima, Senior International Water Advisor for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, at a recent Wilson Center event on the potential challenges and opportunities of wastewater treatment. “In emerging developing countries, children lose 443 million school days per year due to diseases related to water, sanitation, and hygiene,” she said.
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Every Day is Earth Day: Plastic Waste Q&A with Mao Da
›Plastics. From the devastating effects of plastic pollution on our oceans, to the news that plastic bottles likely pollute the drinking water they contain, plastic pollution—the theme of this year’s Earth Day—has been a highly visible issue, and we’ve seen some notable progress on fighting the plastic battle.
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Avoiding a Water Crisis: What’s Next for Cape Town — and Beyond?
›Intense drought in South Africa’s Western Cape Province has led the world-renowned city of Cape Town to the brink of “Day Zero”—the date at which residents would be forced to collect strictly rationed water supplies from shared distribution taps. Water conservation efforts have so far prevented a massive water shutdown, but the city’s rapid population growth and reliance on surface water dams makes it particularly vulnerable to lower precipitation levels.
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