Peru's Melting Glaciers

A harbinger of global climate change that is happening too rapidly all across this world to be just natural. But will the cause really matter should the millions of people who depend on these glaciers for water to survive no longer have it because the world was too busy debating instead of doing something to address it?

Mexico, U.S. Suffer As Rio Grande Sucked Dry

Mexico, U.S. Suffer As Rio Grande Sucked Dry

By Robin Emmott Sun Dec 16, 8:19 PM ET
EJIDO LA LAGUNA, Mexico (Reuters) -

Julian Rosales' farm is within a stone's throw of one of North America's biggest rivers, but the Mexican landowner fears he will not be able to sow his crops next year for lack of water. Rusty tractors plow Rosales' parched earth along the banks of the Rio Grande on Mexico's border with Texas where thousands of local farmers say their livelihoods are at stake because Mexico was this year forced by a bilateral treaty to transfer millions of liters of water to the United States.

While farmers and lawmakers in arid northern Mexico seek to challenge the water payment in an international court, the farmers' plight is a symptom of a much bigger problem: the Rio Grande and its underground aquifers are being sucked dry on both sides of the frontier.
The eastern border region is slowly heading toward a water crisis.

"They have taken our water and these lands are dying. Our children are emigrating to the United States, some illegally," said Rosales, who grows the animal feed sorghum in the desert lands of Mexico's Tamaulipas state on the Gulf of Mexico.

Under a 1944 treaty, Mexico is required to transfer water to the United States every five years from the two dams the countries share on the Texas border. For farmers in Tamaulipas, that means ruined harvests and hardship every time the transfer is made.

The landscape is now dotted with abandoned farms and villages unable to enjoy the artificial irrigation that is central to agriculture in a desert region with sporadic rains. In a last attempt to save the farmers, lawmakers in Tamaulipas have called on Mexico's Supreme Court to rule on whether this year's water transfer was lawful. They argue the treaty stipulates the payment should be made with water from six Mexican tributaries further west along the border that feed the Rio Grande, not with surface water from Tamaulipas. If they win, lawmakers aim to take the United States to an international court to force it to return the water.

End of excerpt.

U.S. To Deny Mexico Water?

My previous entry about this from August, 2006 with more information on the 1944 treaty. And once again, greed takes precedence over human rights.

Give The Gift of Water and Save A Life

Water Partners International: Thank You for Making this “Historic Moment” in Hile Village Possible


This is of course not something we should only think about or do during a holiday season, but it is something that those looking for an honorable and effective way to help this world should think about. Water is a basic essential of life. What better time of the year to think of this than at the time when we celebrate life and peace?

The link above leads to a story about people saved by mine and others' contributions. They now have potable water and their quality of life has improved greatly. This is the difference and impact one person can make upon this world. Therefore, at this time of year when our thoughts should most assuredly turn to peace, love, and those less fortunate who need the opportunity to have a better life, Water Partners International is one organization on the top of my list.

To see children able to attend school because they don't have to fetch dirty diseased water or go without it is a gift beyond compare. Save a life this holiday season. Give the gift of water.

Water Partners International

Asian Meet Looks To Confront Water Crises

Asian Meet Looks To Confront Water Crises

Asian meet looks to confront water crises
by Staff Writers
Beppu, Japan (AFP) Dec 3, 2007

Asian nations came together Monday for a first "water summit" to plan action amid warnings of a dire situation with water resources shrinking and natural disasters on the rise.

The 49-nation conference in Beppu, a southern Japanese town famed for natural hot springs, comes amid growing concern that climate change is aggravating water-related incidents in Asia and elsewhere.

Japan's Crown Prince Naruhito, known for his studies of water, said Asia was home to 60 percent of the world's people but had only 40 percent of its water resources.

"The situation in the Asia-Pacific region does not allow us to be optimistic," said Naruhito, who is honorary president of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's advisory board on water and sanitation.

"As of 2004, there were 700 million people who had no access to safe drinking water and 1.9 billion who were without basic sanitation" in Asia, he said. "In this respect, our region is in the most serious situation in the world, especially in providing sanitation," he said.

Officials, including several heads of state, will hold two days of talks here on ways to step up cooperation on water-related issues that cross borders. The meeting was set up by last year's World Water Summit in Mexico City.
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Hopefully, the one important factor we will hear addressed at this meeting and the UN Conference in Bali will be: Population. It is at the crux of what is now happening regarding our environment. We simply do not have an adequate amount of resources to continue to support this growing global population at the same rapacious pace it is wasting them while conducting business the old way. This then will mean a change of mindset for those living on this planet now who are so used to having all they want whenever they want it. It will require people looking towards the future as they look inside themselves and adjusting their behavior to reflect that moral consciousness. Do we however as a global community have the moral willpower to actually think beyond ourselves and the here and now? We are now at a point where we do not have any choice, especially in regards to water. So when do we move beyond meetings to results?

Three Gorges Dam: Hydropower At Huge Human Cost

Three Gorges Dam: Hydropower At Huge Human Cost

For me, weighing an option also means that the negative repercussions must be truthfully weighed in proportion to the positive. In the case of Three Gorges Dam which the Chinese government has touted as a marvel of engineering in it's quest to satisfy its rapacious need for energy, it is turning into an ecological disaster with the negative outweighing the positive. And therein lies the dilemma of our age.

How can we address the climate crisis effectively if we do not or refuse to address the moral questions involved in our decisions? When we continue to prefer the old ways which are expensive and destructive to new ways which can actually improve the quality of life? Do those decisions need to always lead to displacement of millions of people? To the destruction of traditional and sacred lands? To the extinction of other species and intrusion upon their ecosystems?

This is also where we see the intersection of morality and politics, and as we see with the construction of this dam as with so many other projects like this in other countries such as Turkey, Pakistan, and India when the politics overtakes the moral considerations. If we are to see any real progress in mitigating the effects of climate change, we cannot continue to rely on old ways to deal with new situations. And we are running out of time.


Also see:
PBS: Great Wall Across The Yangtze

U.S. Struggles To Restore Iraq Water

U.S. Struggles To Restore Iraq Water

Struggles? After occupying their country for over four years it is still a "struggle?" After bombarding their country in "shock and awe" and more than likely blowing up any water supplies they had, it is a "struggle?" Sorry, I don't believe for a second that they care about Iraqi people having water or that it is a struggle for anyone there but the people of Iraq to survive. I do however believe those who continue to use Iraq as a cash cow care about the ton of money they will make from building these huge plants that I am sure people will have to pay dearly for after having to deal with them "struggling" to fix what they more than likely destroyed for Bechtel.

Bechtel In Iraq

First the oil now the water...and they know that in the Middle East water is something people would pay dearly for. What a disgrace for America to be a part of such a grand deception and human rights abuse.

The Ilisu Dam Controversy

I wonder if this has any bearing on the water situation in Iraq?

Iraq's Marshes, Corporate Control, and Water Scarcity

Vandana Shiva has it right.

Climate Change Could Diminish Drinking Water More Than Expected

Climate Change Could Diminish Drinking Water More Then Expected

When saltwater and fresh water meet, they mix in complex ways, depending on the texture of the sand along the coastline.by Staff WritersColumbus OH (SPX) Nov 07, 2007As sea levels rise, coastal communities could lose up to 50 percent more of their fresh water supplies than previously thought, according to a new study from Ohio State University. Hydrologists here have simulated how saltwater will intrude into fresh water aquifers, given the sea level rise predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC has concluded that within the next 100 years, sea level could rise as much as 23 inches, flooding coasts worldwide.

Scientists previously assumed that, as saltwater moved inland, it would penetrate underground only as far as it did above ground. But this new research shows that when saltwater and fresh water meet, they mix in complex ways, depending on the texture of the sand along the coastline. In some cases, a zone of mixed, or brackish, water can extend 50 percent further inland underground than it does above ground.

Like saltwater, brackish water is not safe to drink because it causes dehydration. Water that contains less than 250 milligrams of salt per liter is considered fresh water and safe to drink.
Motomu Ibaraki, associate professor of earth sciences at Ohio State, led the study. Graduate student Jun Mizuno presented the results Tuesday, October 30, 2007, at the Geological Society of America meeting in Denver.

"Most people are probably aware of the damage that rising sea levels can do above ground, but not underground, which is where the fresh water is," Ibaraki said. "Climate change is already diminishing fresh water resources, with changes in precipitation patterns and the melting of glaciers. With this work, we are pointing out another way that climate change can potentially reduce available drinking water. The coastlines that are vulnerable include some of the most densely populated regions of the world."

In the United States, lands along the East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico -- especially Florida and Louisiana -- are most likely to be flooded as sea levels rise. Vulnerable areas worldwide include Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and northern Europe. "Almost 40 percent of the world population lives in coastal areas, less than 60 kilometers from the shoreline," Mizuno said. "These regions may face loss of freshwater resources more than we originally thought."

Scientists have used the IPCC reports to draw maps of how the world's coastlines will change as waters rise, and they have produced some of the most striking images of the potential consequences of climate change.

Ibaraki said that he would like to create similar maps that show how the water supply could be affected. That's not an easy task, since scientists don't know exactly where all of the world's fresh water is located, or how much is there. Nor do they know the details of the subterranean structure in many places. One finding of this study is that saltwater will penetrate further into areas that have a complex underground structure.
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So not only will we have diminished fresh water supplies, we will also have to worry about brackish water penetrating further into the fresh water left underground. It is quite a conundrum we are creating for ourselves.