#water-stress

#water-stress

The last pre-war shipments of Middle East oil have yet to reach their destinations, and the second and third-order effects of the crisis - stunted crops and factory blackouts - have yet to hit.

Women are responsible for collecting water in more than 70% of rural households that do not have access to mains water across the developing world. Women and girls collectively spend 250m hours a day collecting water globally. The climate crisis is exacerbating the problem, according to a new report from the UN.

The assault on South Pars, which accounts for 90 percent of Iran's domestic energy use, marked a significant escalation in the conflict, leading to retaliatory attacks on energy facilities across the region.

Data from the US Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service shows that out of approximately 70 river basins across the Western US, only five are at or above the 1991-2020 median snow water equivalent for this time of year.

The powerful March storms that drenched Hawaii produced more than 2 trillion gallons of rain and pushed precipitation levels to as much as 3,000% above normal in a 14-day period for this time of year.

In Turkana, the land is rugged, roads disappear into dust, and villages are scattered across vast distances in a county of just more than a million people. Despite it being the rainy season, weather experts warn that Turkana and other arid regions may receive little relief. Authorities say drought is once again taking place, with 23 of Kenya's 47 counties affected.

In many Texas households, outdoor watering accounts for more than half of the total summer water use. The biggest mistake people make is watering in the middle of the afternoon. When the sun is at its peak, a significant percentage of that water evaporates before it ever hits the roots of your St. Augustine or Bermuda grass.

The Colorado River is an interconnected system, sustained by Rocky Mountain snowpack, rainfall and groundwater. It is fragile, and under increasing stress. Two and a half decades into this century, the river that built the modern West has 20% less water flowing through it than it did on average in the last century. As heat and drought intensify, so do the stakes: Failure to recognize the severity of changing conditions, managing the river in parts without considering needs of the whole and inadequate planning for long-term shortages put the future of all the basin at risk.

In 2009, Wall Street had just imploded, and the Mojave Desert town of Victorville, California-sunblasted, shoddily constructed, and abruptly abandoned-was one of the housing bubble's most spectacular wipeouts. But amid the boarded-up McMansions and tumbleweed-traversed deserted culs-de-sac, the journalist Yasha Levine stumbled upon an entirely different story. Seeking water, a drought-stricken Victorville bulk-purchased enough to supply as many as 30,000 families for a year. The arrangement gave Levine pause: Since when did a public resource like water come with a deed? That question unspooled into the reporting behind his new documentary, Pistachio Wars.

Over time, the water evaporated to form the smaller, brinier Owens Lake. Indigenous Paiute people call the Owens Valley Payahuunadü, 'the land of the flowing water'. Today, Owens Lake is a 'Dusty Vestige of the Old West', as NASA described a photograph of the lake taken from space.

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground.

As water-intensive data centres expand worldwide, their impact on sanitation, inequality and disease is emerging as a serious and under-examined threat. Bubble is probably the word most associated with AI right now, though we are slowly understanding that it is not just an economic time bomb; it also carries significant public health risks. Beyond the release of pollutants, the massive need for clean water by AI data centres can reduce sanitation and exacerbate gastrointestinal illness in nearby communities, placing additional strain on local health infrastructure.

Western water law is based on the prior appropriation doctrine, which gives the first entity to make "beneficial use" of water the right to keep on using that amount, even if that means that upstream "junior" users' spigots will get shut off. By the early 1900s, a rapidly growing California was enthusiastically diverting the Colorado River, with huge irrigation districts gobbling up the senior water rights.

The question of how to protect fish and the ecological health of rivers that feed California's largest estuary is generating heated debate in a series of hearings in Sacramento, as state officials try to gain support for a plan that has been years in the making. "I am passionate that this is the pathway to recover fish," said state Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot. "This is the paradigm we need: collaborative, adaptive management versus conflict and litigation."