Archive for the 'water shortage' Category

Texas Agency Likely to Cut Water to Rice Farms

Published on 02/22/2012 in agriculture, drought, hydrology, management, peak water, policy and water shortage. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Photo retrieved from: www.claimsjournal.com

“Thousands of farmers in Texas’ rice-producing region are likely to be affected by action taken in response to one of the most severe droughts in state history. With water management agencies implementing emergency plans never used before, the Lower Colorado River Authority is widely expected to announce March 1 that it will not release water to rice farmers in three counties.

“Texas usually produces about 5 percent of the nation’s rice. Production also is dropping this year in the other five major rice-growing states, including No. 1 Arkansas, as farmers are pressed by rising production costs and dropping prices.

“Many farmers in the region alternate between growing rice and ranching, but those with cattle sold off much of their livestock last year as the drought parched rangeland and pushed up hay prices. That leaves them with few alternatives now.

“To turn the tide in Texas, Mother Nature needs to dump 5 to 8 inches of rain in the Hill Country to produce about 32.6 billion gallons of runoff into the region’s lakes, LCRA meteorologist Bob Rose said. It’s possible, but Rose “wasn’t very optimistic” about it happening soon.”

Read more: Claims Journal

Sami Oueida

Farmers warn food prices could go up because of drought

Published on 02/22/2012 in agriculture, drought, hydrology, management, peak water, policy, water shortage, water technology and world water supply. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

A combine harvester making it's way along a field of wheat in East Norton in Leicestershire. Farm, agriculture, farming, drought, British farming

Photo retrieved from: The Telegraph

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Peter Kendall, President of the National Farmers Union, said ongoing drought in the South East and Anglia, the “bread basket of Britain”, will cut yields and force up prices.

“As sure as night follows day if it doesn’t rain, food prices will go up. I can guarantee you that,” he said. “If there is less water across bigger areas of northern Europe food will cost more money.”

Drought-afflicted areas need 120 per cent of normal rainfall between now and March to avoid drought but the Met Office is forecasting a dry period.

“Mr Kendall said in the past, when the UK relied on imported food, farmers were ignored during a drought. For example golf courses would continue to be watered – but farmers banned from irrigating crops.”

Read more: The Telegraph

Sami Oueida

Jordan’s Green Fairytale- ‘Once Upon A Water’ Campaign

Published on 02/20/2012 in management, peak water, rivers, tap water, water rights, water shortage and water wars. 0 Comments Tags: .

"Every year, we lose 70 million cubic metres of water due to water theft”. Retrieved from: www.greenprophet.com

“According to the WHO, Jordan has one of the lowest water resource availability per capita in the world. By the year 2025, if current trends continue, per capita water supply is expected to fall from the current 200 cubic meters per person to only 91 cubic meters, putting Jordan in the category of having an absolute water shortage. The Once Upon A Water In Jordan campaign, launched by the influential 7iber media site, is hoping to raise awareness of this dire water situation and also encourage Jordanians to take positive action now.

The title of the project plays on the Arabic for ‘once upon a time’ to which one letter is added to make it read ‘once a upon a water’. According to the campaigners this projects want to:

channel efforts and conversations around the water issues throughout Jordan into one platform that invites interested multimedia professionals and environmentalists to collaboratively produce digital stories of Jordan’s diminishing water, with the technical support from 7iberINC.

Such stories will seek to amass a wealth of oral history and thus put a human face on an ongoing issue, in the eyes of the average citizens and communities affected by the loss and scarcity of water.”

Read more: Green Prophet

lily victoria

SYRIA: Insecurity makes drought-hit farmers even more vulnerable

Published on 02/20/2012 in agriculture, displacement of people, drought, policy and water shortage. 0 Comments Tags: .

Photo retrieved from: www.irinnews.org

“Instability in Syria has aggravated an already vulnerable situation for tens of thousands of farmers and herders affected by recurrent drought, but only a fraction of them have received assistance because of chronic “serious underfunding” of humanitarian programmes in Syria, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns.

“They are really in bad shape. They need assistance,” said Abdulla Tahir Bin Yehia, FAO representative in Syria. “We are willing and able to reach many of the farming communities affected by the drought and the crisis, provided resources are made available by the donor community.”

“[But] no single donor has given us a single penny this year,” Bin Yehia said. “Funding from the donor community is absent.”

So far, FAO – a technical agency which needs to be funded to operate – has relied on its own funds, as well as money from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund.”

Read more: IRIN

lily victoria

Texas Water District Acts to Slow Depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer

Published on 02/14/2012 in agriculture, drought, groundwater, peak water, policy, tap water, water conservation and water shortage. 0 Comments Tags: .

Photo retrieved from: www.nationalgeographic.com

“The new rule issued by the High Plains Underground Water Conservation District, based in Lubbock, declares that water pumped in excess of the “allowable production rate” is illegal.

In Texas, a bastion of the free-market Tea Party, such a rule is hard to fathom.  Most of the state abides by the “rule of capture,” which basically allows farmers to pump as much water as they want from beneath their own land.  But irrigators in northwest Texas rely on the Ogallala aquifer, an underground water reserve that is all-too-rapidly disappearing.  If the region is to have any future at all, water users must find a way to curb the pumping.

The Ogallala is one of the nation’s largest and most productive underground water sources.   It makes up more than three-quarters of the High Plains aquifer, which spans 175,000 square miles and underlies parts of eight U.S. states — Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming.  Water drawn from it irrigates 15.4 million acres of cropland, 27 percent of the nation’s total irrigated area.

Initially farmers settling in the High Plains relied on windmills to help them lift groundwater from beneath the surface.  But in the 1940s and 1950s, with the introduction of powerful pumps, large sprinkler systems and abundant supplies of natural gas and electricity, irrigation in the High Plains took off.  Since 1949, the area under irrigation has risen more than five-fold.  Groundwater withdrawals rose in tandem, resulting in a large-scale and ongoing depletion of this critical water reserve.”

Read more: National Geographic

 

lily victoria

Can Coca-Cola Keep Growing?

Published on 02/09/2012 in aquatic ecosystems, bottled water, contaminated water, displacement of people, glaciers, greenwashing, groundwater, management, privatization and water shortage. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Retrieved from: Wikipedia

“Coca-Cola is a $156 billion nonalcoholic-beverage kingpin that sold more than $46 billion worth of drinks around the world in 2011. As if it needs underscoring, that’shuge. So when it comes to the future for Coca-Cola, is growth still possible?

“If you tuned into Coke’s fourth-quarter earnings release yesterday, you know that there was still growth to be had in the past year, at least. Comparable earnings per share — which adjusts the tally mainly for oddball adjustments from its bottler acquisition — increased 10% for the year to $3.84.

“There’s been no recession for Coke. In the chart below, you can see that earnings did dip in 2008, but when we consider the total earnings growth over the past five years, it’s clear that the Coca-Cola juggernaut is one that’s not easily knocked off course. 

anImageSource: S&P Capital IQ. 2010 earnings adjusted for gains from bottler acquisition. 

“If we break that total growth down to an average annual figure, we can say that Coke is still growing earnings at a clip of better than 11% per year. To deliver that kind of growth on a relatively consistent basis is no small matter no matter who you are, but it’s even more impressive when you’re a company the size of Coke.

“The company hasn’t been shy about deploying some of its ample cash flow to grow through acquisitions. Of note, in 2007 the company ponied up $4.2 billion to buy Vitaminwater maker Glaceau. More recently, the company took over the North American operations of bottler Coca-Cola Enterprises.”
Read more: Daily Finance
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Drought Ravages Farms Across Wide Swath Of Mexico

Published on 02/08/2012 in agriculture, boreholes, climate change, drought, peak water, rivers, tap water and water shortage. 0 Comments

Photo retrieved from: www.npr.org

“Rodarte says that for the past two years, the crops that he’s planted here have failed. Normally, he plants beans and corn to feed his family, and oats to sell. He says he hasn’t harvested anything because the land is too dry and there’s no water.

This is an arid part of Mexico, but normally there’s a rainy season between June and September, allowing farmers to grow crops during the summer. They also tend cattle on the scrubby rolling hills dotted with cactuses.

Rodarte has lived here all his life and says this is the worst drought he’s ever seen.

“Now most people are leaving,” he says, “to the cities, the coasts where it rains, or to the United States. That’s where the people are going to work. And those who are abroad in the U.S. are the ones who are sustaining the families here. They send us a little bit of money.”

The drought is extending across a broad swath of central, northwestern and northern Mexico.

Sugar exports are expected to drop 40 percent, and one top military official says the lack of rain is even hurting marijuana production in Durango. Many farmers have been forced to sell off their livestock as pastures and watering holes run dry.

Government To Provide Aid

President Felipe Calderon has pledged billions of dollars in assistance to the hardest hit states, and vowed that no one is going to starve because of the crisis.”

Read more: NPR

 

lily victoria

Arab Region To Target Reducing Adverse Effects Of Desalination

Published on 02/06/2012 in desalination, hydrology, management, oil, peak water, tap water and water shortage. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Photo retrieved from: www.industcards.com

“With 5 per cent of the world’s population and only 1 per cent of global freshwater water resources, the Arab region is heavily affected by water scarcity and heavily dependent on non-conventional water resources such as desalination and treated wastewater.

The collective water shortage of 17 Arab countries is currently estimated at over 30 billion cubic metres and this deficit is expected to triple by 2030 and increase to over 150 billion cubic metres by 2050, the Arab Water Academy in Abu Dhabi said yesterday.

The current heavy reliance on fossil fuels for water desalination is not sustainable — Saudi Arabia alone uses 1.5 million barrels of oil per day at its plants.

Many of the problems related to desalination could be reduced by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources. This will reduce the cost of energy consumption, which accounts for 30-50 per cent of the overall water desalination costs.”

Read more: gulfnews.com

 

lily victoria

Africa land grabs ‘could cause conflicts’

Published on 02/04/2012 in agriculture, policy, privatization, riparian zone, rivers, water diversions, water shortage and water wars. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Photo retrieved from: www.guardian.co.uk

“ILC zeroed in on West Africa, where it said land acquisitions by foreign entities were causing major environmental and agricultural damage along the River Niger, at 2,265 miles the third longest river in Africa after the Nile and the Congo.

“The siphoning of water for huge areas of farmland will worsen the already low water levels of the Niger,” it said. The result was a “50 percent diminution of the delta flood plain’s land area.”

It concluded, “Given that social conflict over resources between farmers and pastoralists has always been a feature of the Niger Basin, the Coalition suggests that large-scale irrigation could heighten tension between local and downstream water users.”

On Jan. 20, two Liberian land campaigners wrote in The New York Times that the government of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, co-winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, was likely” “sowing the seeds of future conflict by handing over huge tracts of land to foreign investors and dispossessing rural Liberians.”
Read more: UPI

lily victoria

Christian Pilgrimage and Middle Eastern Water Scarcity

Published on 02/02/2012 in agriculture, contaminated water, desalination, policy, rivers, tap water, wastewater and water shortage. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Photo retrieved from: www.takepart.com

“In the current climate of political contest and a reduced Jordan River, currently conveying 2 percent of its historic flow, it is worth thinking anew about the importance of the Jordan, borders and water. In place of reactionary territorial claims justified through religious precedent, perhaps the time has come to acknowledge biblical depictions of regional societies in which local economies and resource availability provide the basis of coexistence. Neither ancient nor modern claims will matter when the water sources run dry.

Water scarcity in the Middle East may lead to more internecine violence or to the actual demise of large, poor families. Every Middle Eastern government with a coastline looks to solve the problem through large de-salination projects without regard for the saline byproducts, the enormous energy costs and the need for global capital investment. While global capital finds it way into most local infrastructure projects these days, it causes particular concern to think of global capital setting water prices in situations like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which the state (or proto state) encourages families to expand in the name of winning the demographic war. Yet the diminishing water table may be the very agent of political transformation.”

Read more: Huffington Post

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