WRI Water Program Director Betsy Otto argues the world needs to make water security a top priority and outlines three key steps we can take, taking a global perspective with examples from the United States and Ethiopia.
water risk
Advancing sustainable water management in the private sector by driving innovation in water-related data, tools and strategies.
Water crises can shake societies, destroy livelihoods and threaten prosperity for decades. They can also be the spark that sets aflame a powder keg of social and political issues, resulting in violent conflict.
From the foothills of the Taurus Mountains in Turkey to the desert wadis on the southern tip of Yemen, the history of water conflicts provides a cautionary tale: When water and politics mix, freshwater can become both a weapon and a threat to national security.
Water, Security and Conflict
This paper summarizes our current understanding of water and security threats and their links to conflict, migration, and food insecurity. It is intended for professionals in the defense, diplomacy, and development fields. We review the key drivers behind growing water risk, describe and...
Building on decades of work across the continent, World Resources Institute inaugurated a new regional office, WRI Africa, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Power from solar and wind requires zero or little water, unlike coal, gas and other forms of thermal power. Renewable energy can therefore be particularly attractive to water-stressed countries looking to meet their increasing electricity demands without producing emissions.
While more than one-third of China still suffers from high water stress, there are signs of improvement: New WRI analysis shows that the rate of increase in the country's water withdrawals has slowed from 5.1 billion cubic meters per year in 2001-2010 to 1.6 billion cubic meters per year from 2010-2015.
Cape Town, South Africa has been in the news for its impending "Day Zero," when the city will shut off taps and start rationing water, but its reservoirs aren't the only ones shrinking. Satellite images reveal dwindling water supplies in Morocco, India, Iraq and Spain.
Today, the World Resources Institute (WRI) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management Sustainability Initiative released a new technical note, Mapping Public Water Management by Harmonizing and Sharing Corporate Water Risk Information, that proposes a method for closing this data gap.