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by and - Cape Town, South Africa is poised to shut off water taps for homes and businesses in the next few months. Is the next "Day Zero" coming to a city near you?
water risk
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by Sarah Parsons - January 16, 2018Toxic air pollution. Plastic-filled oceans. Sucking carbon from the skies. These are just a few of the stories that will shape 2018's legacy.
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A new paper from the World Resources Institute, Parched Power: Water Demands, Risks and Opportunities for India’s Power Sector, analyzes all of India’s 400+ thermal power plants and finds that India’s power supply is increasingly in jeopardy due to water shortages, costing power generation and revenue.
publication
by Tianyi Luo, Deepak Sriram Krishnan and Shreyan Sen - January 2018This paper aims to uncover water risks to India’s thermal power sector.
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by Tianyi Luo - January 16, 2018Fourteen of India’s 20 largest thermal utilities experienced at least one shutdown due to water shortages between 2013-2016, at a cost of $1.4 billion. It's a taste of what's to come in a warmer, more crowded world.
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by Leah Schleifer and Tianyi Luo - January 04, 2018Power plants use a lot of water for cooling, but most don't disclose how much. A new WRI methodology calculates their thirst by using Google Earth images.
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by Charles Iceland - September 25, 2017Water stress is causing unrest, undermining economies and ultimately driving people to leave their homes. To explore this vast topic in greater depth, Aqueduct Director Charles Iceland pens a WRI Commentary—a new content type that is longer than our typical blogs—on conflict and water.
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by Leah Schleifer - August 24, 2017The global water crisis can be summed up in these "seven deadly sins," from climate change to leaky infrastructure, that water researchers and officials will try to tackle during the 2017 World Water Week.
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by Ayushi Trivedi, Natalie Elwell and Sara Walker - August 10, 2017As they struggle to care for farms and families in a changing climate, women in the developing world face unfair burdens related to their gender. A shift in approaches could increase agricultural yields and advance equal rights.
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by Tianyi Luo - July 26, 2017Thermal power plants rely on water for cooling, which means droughts can push generation offline. In India, reports describe this vulnerability—itself just another reason to speed the transition to renewables.
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by Katie Lyons and Todd Gartner - March 21, 2017It’s fitting that International Day of Forests (March 21) and World Water Day (March 22) fall next to each other, as the health of these resources often go hand-in-hand.
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by Charles Iceland and Betsy Otto - February 27, 2017Water security drives state stability and safety in many regions of the world. The direct and indirect effects of water stress—such as migration, food shortages and general destabilization—transcend national boundaries.
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by Jiao Wang, Lijin Zhong and Charles Iceland - January 10, 2017More than 678 million Chinese citizens now live in areas facing high or extremely high water stress. Industrialization and urbanization are to blame.
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by Yiyuan Qin and Todd Gartner - August 30, 2016GFW Water, a new mapping tool, explores how tree loss, fires and erosion in forests affects downstream water supplies—and how investing in “natural infrastructure” can help.
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by Sara Walker - July 11, 2016Florida's Treasure Coast has turned toxic this summer, as a foul-smelling algae bloom resembling guacamole has made some of the Sunshine State's beaches untouchable. One cause is the controlled release of water from an over-full Lake Okeechobee into local rivers that flow east to the Atlantic and west to the Gulf of Mexico.
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by Todd Gartner and Suzanne Ozment - July 05, 2016Natural infrastructure, strategically managed natural and open spaces like forests or wetlands, can direct more clean water to cities by controlling water flows, preventing sediment buildup and absorbing pollutants before they flow into waterways.
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by Paul Reig and Eliot Metzger - June 22, 2016Cities and women can be key players in managing future water demand, including reducing risks from the fastest-growing water users--energy and industrial activities.
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by Lauretta Burke - June 08, 2016More than 80 percent of the Caribbean's wastewater enters the ocean untreated, spurring the growth of algae on coral reefs and increasing the risk of infections for swimmers, among other issues. While many have been aware of this problem in Tobago for more than 20 years, there's been little government action.
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by Andrew Maddocks, Betsy Otto and Tianyi Luo - June 02, 2016Research on future water risk finds that rapidly growing demand for water will drive the greatest increase in water stress, even more so than supply changes caused by droughts and other extreme events.