Circle of Blue WaterNews

More and more people are asking a question once thought preposterous in the United States. That question: do I trust my tap water? It turns out that the answer is very different for different groups of people. Circle of Blue's Brett Walton spoke with Asher Rosinger, an assistant professor of biobehavioral health and anthropology at Penn State University. Rosinger was the lead author for a study pu...

What's Up With Water March 26, 2018 by Circle Of Blue

What's Up With Water March 19, 2018 by Circle Of Blue

What's Up With Water March 12, 2018 by Circle Of Blue

What's Up WIth Water March 5, 2018 by Circle Of Blue

What's Up With Water - 2.26.18 What’s up with Water, a condensation of the world’s water news, from Circle of Blue.

In July, the World Health Organization and UNICEF published the first assessment of drinking water and sanitation service under the sustainable development goals. Circle of Blue reporter Brett Walton spoke with Catarina Fonseca, head of the international and innovation program at IRC, a water and sanitation organization, about the report's strengthens and weaknesses as well as the successes and fa...

Water, or lack thereof, is often at the front lines of conflict. By documenting water conflict across history, Dr. Peter Gleick, chief scientist and president emeritus of the Pacific Institute, explores the instances where water and violence have gone hand and hand. His water conflict chronology is a fascinating river throughout history and was just updated. In our latest podcast, Gleick tells us...

Large-scale exploitation of groundwater began in the 1950s and continues today. The water that flows underground and between soil particles gave rise to the Green Revolution in India and allows desert agriculture to flourish. It nourishes streams and springs and is the primary drinking water source for nearly half of the world's people. Yet, due to urbanization, climate change, energy extraction,...

How did water become considered a resource? What values guide its management? Circle of Blue reporter Brett Walton spoke with Dr. Jeremy Schmidt, lecturer in geography at the University of Durham, about his new book, Water: Abundance, Scarcity, and Security in the Age of Humanity. Schmidt argues that the dominant global water narrative -- of abundance leading to scarcity and now concerns about sec...

More than a half dozen proposals to develop hardrock mines in northwestern British Columbia are producing worry downstream in Alaska. The mines would be located on some of the state's most productive and scenic salmon rivers, and the economic and environmental costs of a large spill of mine waste could be severe. The collapse of a tailings dam at the Mount Polley mine, which happened nearly three...

When members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe set up camp on the banks of the Cannonball River in April to protest the Dakota Access pipeline, they had little idea how widely their movement would spiral. The peaceful demonstration, which drew supporters from all corners of the continent to the North Dakota plains, summoned a response that not even the White House could ignore. Judith LeBlanc, dire...

In 2016, Circle of Blue’s US coverage closely followed the developments out of Flint Michigan, as the city continued to struggle with lead contamination in its drinking water. Our team also covered the ongoing controversy over the Dakota Access Pipeline. Around the world, we reported stories on water conflict, infrastructure spending, stranded assets, and severe droughts brought on by El Nino in A...

From Peru to Australia water stresses are rewriting the way mines are built, regulated, and operated. While the environmental risks to water from mining are well documented, new concerns arise as populations grow and water scarcity increases. Are companies pricing these new risks into their operations? Are communities around mines informed not only about environmental concerns, but also about wate...

Donald Trump enters the White House at a time of severe ecological and political turbulence. His few campaign statements about the environment were direct and consequential: withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement, close the Environmental Protection Agency, and increase infrastructure spending. What does a Trump administration mean for water? How will he address environmental policy, give...

The great rivers of Southeast Asia -- the Mekong, Irrawaddy, Salween, and others -- are targets for dozens of major dams that will transform the region's politics and ecology. The contest over the Mekong River is perhaps the most well-known, but conflict in the Salween basin is no less active. Fighting between the central government and ethnic groups has displaced thousands of people in recent yea...

Large-scale drought in southern Africa. Floods in North Korea and Haiti. Rumblings of water-related conflicts in Pakistan and India. In Circle of Blue’s latest HotSpots H2O podcast, Dr. David Grey, a visiting professor of Water Policy from Oxford University, argues that water security is closely linked to migration, climate change risk, and economic development. In an interview with J. Carl Ganter...

Tensions are heating up between India and Pakistan over key water sources in Kashmir, with India threatening to revoke the nearly 60-year-old Indus Water Treaty. Tune into a timely HotSpots H2O podcast conversation with Michael Kugelman, India authority at the Woodrow Wilson Center, who joins Circle of Blue’s Cody Pope to discuss the Indus Water Treaty, Kashmir, and the importance of the treaty on...