Pollution

SEATTLE:  A River Runs Through it; But What A River It Is

By Jessica Partnow

SEATTLE – The Duwamish River is Seattle’s industrial backbone, a source of much of the city’s history, and one of the country’s most contaminated chemical waste sites.  Gary Thomsen, a high school history teacher who has devoted much of his career to studying the history of the river, says the now-polluted river valley once boasted “the most fertile soil in the world, second only to the Amazon River.”

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Scarcity

Jeffrey Sachs Looks To The Future: “No One Will Take Water for Granted.”

Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and one of the world’s leading experts on economic development and the environment, says he sees major problems with water in much of the world and that “we have not been attentive” to them.

In a video interview with Joseph B. Treaster, the editor of 1h2o, Dr. Sachs said that “at least some of the roots of the conflict” in Darfur in the Sudan can be traced “to great water stress, declining rainfall and rising population.”

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Pollution

Northern Peru: Jungle Rivers Where the Sweet Water No Longer Flows

By Kelly Hearn

Nueva Jerusalén, Peru - Tomas Carijano sat at the front of the canoe, whittling the wooden dart to a deadly point, a blowgun propped against his knee. Then, with a nod, he gave the signal.

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Scarcity

The Death of A Lake: Nobody Took Care of It; A Cactus Rises Where Fishing Boats Once Bobbed

By Sarah Stuteville

HARAR, Ethiopia - Girma Moges is angry. He was here in eastern Ethiopia four years ago when the pump he managed for a decade stopped forever. And he’s still here now, just outside the ancient walled city of Harar.

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Scarcity

Walking for Water: An Exhausting Job That Never Ends

By Sarah Stuteville

DILLO, Ethiopia - “Just breathe,” I tell myself as I slowly shuffle up the dusty gravel path. “One breath with each step.” I have a muddy yellow plastic can strapped to my back. It is filled with water and weighs 50 pounds, close to a third as much as I weigh. It is hard for me to walk, but I am trying to follow the cracked plastic sandals in front of me. 

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Reviews

BOOK REVIEW: Blue Covenant, The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water

By Maude Barlow, 184 pp, The New Press, $24.95

Reviewed By Alexandra De Filippo

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Maude Barlow:
Author
I thought I knew a lot about the serious problems with water around the world – the shortages, the pollution, the impact on cities and villages. After all, we have been hearing for some time that if the wars of the 20th centuries were fought over oil, those of the 21st century would be fought over water.  Even so, I was caught off guard as I read Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water, Maude Barlow’s latest book. The book, the 16th she has written on the environment, development and politics underscored for me the immediacy and magnitude of the global water crisis and the nature of the debate surrounding the ownership of water. 

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The Business of Water In An East African Shanty Town

By Sarah Stuteville

NAIROBI, Kenya--As day breaks over the rusty tin roofs and makeshift homes of the sprawling Kibera slum in Nairobi, the water sellers are already at their water tanks, waiting for their first customers.

Selling water in one of the world’s largest slums is a good business. On most days the vendors charge 5 cents for five gallons, 100 times the cost of piped water provided by the city. But the city does not send water to the residents of Kibera--at any price.

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You can lend your voice to discussions taking place online about global water issues. 1H2o is partnering with helium.com in another effort to bring awareness of the global water crisis through the creation of media on the subject. Click on one of the titles below to participate and compete in the 1H2o Citizen Journalism Awards Contest.

Current Contest Question

What are some examples of corruption involving water and what is the impact of the corruption on people and communities?

1 of 7

By V R Rutledge

When one thinks of corruption in the Water Management sector of government the natural tendency is to consider those departments concerned with providing water to the populace. According to Transparancy International and the section of that organization called Water Integrity Network the problem is of a much wider scope. Water pollution is one of the main problems but not the only problem. From the Global Corruption report of Transparency International "Water is vital and has no
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One Water the Movie

Editor's Blog

Joseph B. Treaster: Water and The World

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Belgrade: The Tap Water Seems Fine, But There’s More to the Story

BELGRADE, Serbia – This is a place where tourists are told it is safe to drink water from the tap. And that seems to be true.

I’ve just spent nearly a week in Belgrade in June with several hundred editors and publishers from around the world, members of the influential International Press Institute. Many of them were drinking the tap water and there was no run on medical facilities, as far as I could tell.

But there are plenty of environmental concerns in Serbia and the five other countries that make up the former Yugoslavia, still recovering from a decade of war in the 1990s.

Belgrade sits majestically at the confluence of the Danube and Sava Rivers, on a site so attractive and strategic, that it has been fought over and ruined many times, the acting mayor, Zoran Alimpic, reminded me and the visiting editors in a meeting at City Hall.

Natural beauty, yes. But both the Danube and the Sava are heavily polluted from years of heavy manufacturing, agricultural runoff and chemicals that came with the warfare.

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Wind, water and change

The hurricane season is underway and coincidently, the University of Miami is introducing its newly designed website devoted to water and everything related to water, worldwide. The best weather forecasters are predicting another busy year of storms and they might be right. Their supporting evidence seems stronger this year.

We’re also predicting a busy year at the water website, 1H2O.org, a production of the School of Communication’s Knight Center for International Media.

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More Blogs & Sites

Dot Earth: Andrew C. Revkin
WaterDoc.org

World News

BBC
BBC: Science/Nature
The New York Times
The New York Times: Science
The Washington Post
Associated Press
Associated Press: Science
Reuters
Reuters: Environment
Al Jazeera: English
National Geographic

Videos

Ethiopia: Water, Climate Change and Conflict

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Global climate change is making a bad situation worse. As we see in this report from the rugged region of southern Ethiopia, where drought is drying up wells, threatening an ancient way of life and fueling conflict.

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Innovate or Die - Aquaduct: Mobile Filtration Vehicle

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The Aquaduct is a pedal powered vehicle that transports water and filters it while in motion.

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Lifestraw

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In an effort to combat water related diseases the Lifestaw purifies water while it is being consumed.

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