A Special Podcast on World Water Issues
This week: A special podcast on water issues. All over the world, water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource. According to the World Health Organization, almost a fifth of the world’s population – more than a billion people — live in areas where the water is scarce.
A Cambodian Lake at Risk: Even places with a relative abundance of water are experiencing problems. Cambodia is a good example. Most Cambodians depend on fish for protein. And most of that fish comes not from the ocean but from a huge inland lake called the Tonle Sap — the largest lake in Southeast Asia. The Tonle Sap ecosystem has been battered by dams, logging and other development.
Report: By the World’s Mary Kay Magistad in Cambodia.
Drought and Conflict: In the Middle East, water has long been a source of conflict. A long drought — and the threat of even less rain in years to come — is raising fears of worse times ahead. Linda Gradstein has two stories from Israel and the West Bank on the growing impact of the region’s water crisis.
Report #1: Conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Authority over water.
Report #2: Some non-governmental organizations on both sides, such as Friends of the Earth Middle East and the Arava Institute, are trying to work together on the problem.
Water and Climate Change: Water issues are increasingly intertwined with climate change.
Guest: Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change.
Potential Solutions:
- Designing Water’s Future. Finalists of the 2008-2009 Aspen Design Challenge.
- Desalination: A National Perspective. A free e-book published by the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Advancing Desalination Technology (2008).
- Desalination: Option or Distraction for a Thirsty World? Another take on desalination, from the World Wildlife Fund (2007).
- Local Solutions to the Global Water Crisis. Article featuring several projects of the International Development Research Centre.
- A Sustainable Vision for Water in the Twenty-First Century. Audio and transcript of a 2008 lecture by Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute.
- Solutions for a Water-Short World. A thorough, if somewhat dated (1998) overview, published by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
- Our Water, Our Waste, Our Town. Case studies and manual for reforming urban water and sanitation facilities. From the international charity WaterAid.
- The UN-Habitat Best Practises Database includes several creative local responses to the water crisis — such as how the Spanish city of Zaragoza cut its water use to one third of the national average.
Music:
Bring Me Some Water, by Melissa Etheridge
You Don’t Miss Your Water, by Otis Redding
