In India, experts warn that some regions may need to be evacuated by 2025 due to the severity of the ongoing water crisis. Groundwater is depleting at an alarming rate. With increased population in urban settings, the need for fresh water is growing without the infrastructure to support the growth.
Read more here: Bengaluru may have to be evacuated in a decade if water crisis persists
‘Give us enough water’ was the rallying cry for villagers who blocked a highway in the Indian village of Surajkaradi to protest the village’s dwindling water supply. The village’s main source of water, Narmada water, has not delivered water for the last two weeks. A lack of rainfall has left groundwater sources dry, leaving villagers dependent on alternative sources like Narmada.
Read more here: Villagers block highway, seek adequate water supply
In India, the faucets run for an hour or two per day. That’s when the wells run dry. Villagers line up at spigots hoping to fill their water jugs. Farming has become increasingly difficult. The underground water aquifers are being depleted at a rapid rate. New wells are being drilled but many are unable to reach the water depths.
Read more here: How unchecked pumping is sucking aquifers dry in India
MIT research is helping to identify a strategy to improve the water infrastructure in rural India. The goal is to develop sustainable water resources for the more than 900 million people who reside in these remote areas. India has made a concerted effort to improve water and sanitation, but the country’s poor infrastructure has prevented significant progress.
Read more here: Envisioning the future of water for 900 million people
Meera Subramaniam set out to study vultures. The environmental journalist was interested in determining why the scavenging bird of prey was suddenly dying off by the millions across its natural habitat in India. What started as a research project on vultures turned into a ‘conversation of a sustainable environment, not just in India.’
That dialogue was recently published in the book, A River Runs Again: India’s Natural World in Crisis, from the Barren Cliffs of Rajasthan to the Farmlands of Karnataka, which Subramaniam discusses in a visit to Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies last Thursday. The book shares five stories of India’s natural world in crisis.
Balancing rich tradition and progression, India is a country in flux. From villagers who refuse to use ‘clean’ stoves out of habit to young women who set out to become the first in their village to learn reproductive education to farmers sold a ‘bill of goods’ during the Green Revolution, there are lessons to be learned. Are the solutions practical for a country deeply divided between tradition and progression?
Read more of Meera Subramaniam’s research here:
The Christian Science Monitor – ‘A River Runs Again’ tells five tales of India at the crossroads
Washington Post – These cheap, clean stoves were supposed to save millions of lives. What happened?
Public Radio International – India brings back ancient wisdom to fight its modern environmental problems
A water shortage in the Indian city of Chennai has affected the water supply to local hospitals, forcing doctors to delay patient care and, in some cases, postpone surgeries. These hospitals rely on the city to supply water. But, with the region in the midst of a severe water crisis, the water supply is minimal and, in some areas, has been halted for two to three days.
Read more here: Water Shortage Forces Hospitals to Postpone Surgeries
The children of Kanija Village in India celebrated World Water Day this year through art by depicting how their lives are affected by water. Many communities lack access to clean, safe drinking water. Women and children often spend many hours each day searching for water, often unhealthy for human use. Water.org is one of several organizations working to provide these communities with the infrastructure and access to clean drinking water.
The artwork is available on here: Art from Kanija Village.
Pumping wells in the dark of night, criminal bosses rule the liquid economy in one of the world’s busiest cities. Can anyone stop them?
Down by the sandy banks of the Yamuna River, the men must work quickly. At a little past 12 a.m. one humid night in May, they pull back the black plastic tarp covering three boreholes sunk deep in the ground along the waterway that traces Delhi’s eastern edge. From a shack a few feet away, they then drag thick hoses toward a queue of 20-odd tanker trucks idling quietly with their headlights turned off. The men work in a team: While one man fits a hose’s mouth over a borehole, another clambers atop a truck at the front of the line and shoves the tube’s opposite end into the empty steel cistern attached to the vehicle’s creaky frame.
Read more of Aman Sethi’s article from Foreign Policy here: At the Mercy of the Water Mafia
The headlines are the same in Brazil, India, Pakistan and the United States. People are running out of fresh drinking water.
In ‘Why fresh water shortages will cause the next great global crisis,’ The Guardian examines how countries are coping with water shortages and the possible long-term effects of living without water.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/08/how-water-shortages-lead-food-crises-conflicts
