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by and - Flood risk in the Mississippi River Basin is expected to threaten $4.2 billion in GDP annually by 2030, an $831 million increase from 2010. Levees alone won't fix the problem — and may even worsen it.
Aqueduct
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To help businesses achieve the sustainability efforts needed to feed a rapidly growing population, Cargill is contributing $2 million USD to the next phase of its partnership with World Resources Institute (WRI). The two global entities will combine their expertise to accelerate the development and improvement of tools, including Global Forest Watch and a new Water Management Toolkit, for sustainable business operations.
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Aqueduct Floods, a new tool from World Resources Institute that measures water-related flood risks around the world, finds that by 2030, 15 million people and $177 billion in urban property will be impacted annually by coastal flooding, while 132 million people and $535 billion in urban property will be impacted annually due to riverine flooding. WRI also finds that investing in flood protection infrastructure now can significantly decrease the impact of floods later.
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by Philip J. Ward, Hessel C. Winsemius, Samantha Kuzma, Marc F.P. Bierkens, Arno Bouwman, Hans De Moel, Andrés Díaz Loaiza, Dirk Eilander, Johanna Englhardt, Gilles Erkens, Eskedar Tafete Gebremedhin, Charles Iceland, Henk Kooi, Willem Ligtvoet, Sanne Muis, Paolo Scussolini, Edwin H. Sutanudjaja, Rens Van Beek, Bas Van Bemmel, Jolien Van Huijstee, Frank Van Rijn, Bregje Van Wesenbeeck, Deepak Vatvani, Martin Verlaan, Timothy Tiggeloven and Tianyi Luo - April 2020According to new data from WRI's Aqueduct Floods Tool, by 2030 the number of people impacted by floods will double worldwide — from 65 million to 132 million due to riverine flooding and from 7 million to 15 million due to coastal flooding.
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by Samantha Kuzma and Tianyi Luo - April 23, 2020Climate change and population growth will expose more people to dangerous flooding. Investing in flood protection measures can reduce risk while helping economies rebound after COVID-19.
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by Cristina Logg, Julian Kölbel, Colin Strong, Paul Reig and Ross Hamilton - April 2020This Technical Note documents a pilot project to better understand public water management by crowdsourcing responses to a standardized question set. Using the results of the pilot and additional stakeholder interviews, the authors have developed an updated question set to assess conditions of public water management for industrial water users.
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April 23, 2020
Flood experts introduced two updated tools that help fill in the critical information gap between climate change and flooding.
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by Samantha Kuzma, Peter Kerins, Liz Saccoccia, Cayla Whiteside, Hannes Roos and Charles Iceland - March 2020This paper discusses a methodology to forecast conflict up to a year in advance. The model is a product of the Water, Peace, and Security partnership, which is pioneering the development of public information tools and approaches that can support evidence-based actions to reduce security risks and promote water cooperation.
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March 09, 2020
Dive into WRI's research that culminated in the recent publication, Achieving Abundance. WRI Water experts will discuss what the findings reveal about the state of water security around the world and investigate what role investors can play.
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by Betsy Otto and Leah Schleifer - February 10, 2020While agriculture and industry withdraw the majority of the world’s freshwater (70% and 19%, respectively), demand from households is rising precipitously.
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by Sara Walker, Rutger Willem Hofste and Leah Schleifer - November 25, 2019Data on Aqueduct Food reveals that one-third of the world's irrigated crops are grown in areas facing extremely high water stress.
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by Hayden Higgins - November 11, 2019WRI Water Program Director Betsy Otto knows the world should be worried about water: Her team's research showed this year that one-quarter of the world's population lives in extreme water stress. In this conversation, though, she talks about the solutions—technological, political, and managerial—that can alleviate the strain.
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by Nathaniel Mason, Denali Nalamalapu and Jan Corfee-Morlot - October 07, 2019African countries face some of the highest water risk in the world, now exacerbated by climate change. But management and investment are often bigger challenges. Tackling them can strengthen economies and build countries' resilience to climate change.
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by Tien Shiao, Ross Hamilton, Cora Kammeyer, Jason Morrison, Christina Copeland, Cate Lamb, Kari Vigerstol, Naabia Ofosu-Amaah, Paul Reig, Alexis Morgan, Rylan Dobson and Peter Koefoed Bjørnsen - September 2019This guide aims to help companies set effective site water targets that are informed by catchment context, which can create value and lessen risks for the company and support collective action.
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by Paul Reig, Wendy Larson, Samuel Vionnet and Jean-Baptiste Bayart - August 2019This paper provides a methodology to calculate and valuate the benefits of water stewardship activities. This new method enables businesses and other key stakeholders to better tackle shared water risks at catchment-scale.
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WRI’s updated Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas finds that 17 countries, which are home to a quarter of the world’s population, face “extremely high” water stress.
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by Rutger Willem Hofste, Paul Reig and Leah Schleifer - August 06, 2019New data on WRI's Aqueduct platform ranks the world's countries from least to most water-stressed.
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by Rutger Willem Hofste, Samantha Kuzma, Sara Walker, Edwin H. Sutanudjaja, Marc F.P. Bierkens, Marijn J.M. Kuijper, Marta Faneca Sanchez, Rens Van Beek, Yoshihide Wada, Sandra Galvis Rodríguez and Paul Reig - August 2019This paper discusses updates to the Aqueduct™ 3.0 water risk framework, that is used, among other things, as underlying database for the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas and Country Rankings.
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by Raj Bhagat Palanichamy - June 25, 2019Chennai's four main reservoirs are virtually dry. This crisis is not only due to last year's poor monsoon season—lack of proper management is driving the city's water security problems.
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by Afiya Anyabwile and Sara Walker - June 04, 2019While the average person drinks 2 to 4 liters of water a day, it requires an astonishing 2,000 to 5,000 liters of water to produce the food that the average person eats each day! Here are five ways companies, farmers and consumers can lessen the food system’s impact on water.