The Economist print edition
May 20th 2010
A special report on water - Business begins to stir, But many water providers still have a long way to go
ALTHOUGH water is a universal human requirement, the use people make of it varies hugely. The average Malian draws 4 cubic metres a year for domestic use, the average American 215. Include all uses, and the figures range from 20 cubic metres for the average Ugandan to over 5,000 for his Turkmenistani counterpart. The statistics can be misleading: in places where rain falls copiously and evenly from the skies, withdrawals will be small. Moreover, water-blessed countries have much less reason to be careful with their resources than the water-starved. Yet high use of water is not necessarily bad. It depends how it is employed, and whether it is naturally replaced.
The Economist print edition
May 20th 2010
A special report on water - For want of a drink
Finite, vital, much wanted, little understood, water looks unmanageable. But it needn’t be, argues John Grimond
WHEN the word water appears in print these days, crisis is rarely far behind. Water, it is said, is the new oil: a resource long squandered, now growing expensive and soon to be overwhelmed by insatiable demand. Aquifers are falling, glaciers vanishing, reservoirs drying up and rivers no longer flowing to the sea. Climate change threatens to make the problems worse. Everyone must use less water if famine, pestilence and mass migration are not to sweep the globe. As it is, wars are about to break out between countries squabbling over dams and rivers. If the apocalypse is still a little way off, it is only because the four horsemen and their steeds have stopped to search for something to drink.
The Economist print edition
May 20th 2010
A special report on water: Every drop counts and in Singapore every drop is counted
NO COUNTRY manages its water as well as Singapore. Admittedly, it has high rainfall and it is a tiny country, but that is exactly the trouble. As an island-city-state, it has little land on which to collect enough water for its 4.8m people, and not much room to store it. To supplement its bounty from above, it takes the salt out of sea water and imports supplies from Malaysia. But relations with its big neighbour are often strained; the two treaties under which the water is provided, both about 50 years old, will expire in 2011 and 2061 respectively; and Lee Kuan Yew, the father of the nation, has never forgotten that the invading Japanese blew up the water pipeline when they seized Singapore in 1942.
The Economist print edition
May 20th 2010
The ups and downs of dams, Small projects often give better returns
THE trouble with water is that it is all politics, no economics. The costs of poor management are large: groundwater depletion takes 2.1% off Jordan’s GDP; water pollution and scarcity knock 2.3% off China’s; 11% of Kenya’s was lost to flooding in 1997-98, and 16% to drought in the next two years. Rich countries build sewers, drains, dams, reservoirs, flood defences, irrigation canals and barrages to avoid such problems. Poor countries, with some exceptions, notably China, find large projects much more difficult. But at least large projects give politicians a monument to boast about. Small projects—weirs and wells and waterworks—have no allure for big-headed politicians.
The Economist print edition
May 20th 2010
A special report on water, Trade and conserve
How to make tight supplies go further
IF MOST governments are bad at making wise investment decisions about water, that is largely because they are bad at evaluating the costs and benefits, and that in turn is at least partly because they find it hard to price water. Many find it hard even to measure. Yet you cannot manage what you cannot measure.
CNN Opinion
May 28, 2010 7:47 a.m. EDT
What if carbon dioxide were as black as oil?
By Christopher Reddy, Special to CNN
CNN)—What if carbon dioxide were as black as oil?
When your house is on fire, you may not be in the mood to hear about an impending cancer epidemic that threatens your neighborhood, so I hesitate to bring up this topic.
The Independent
Friday, 21 May 2010
Polluted by profit: Johann Hari on the real Climategate
Global warming - and the worst environmental disasters - will only be tackled when green lobbyists in the US stop taking cash from Big Oil and Big Coal
Why did America’s leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen to lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the rainforests – and runaway global warming? Why are their staff dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as “unworkable” and “unrealistic”? Why are they clambering into corporate “partnerships” with BP, which is responsible for the worst oil spill in living memory?
GreenBiz
Published May 20, 2010
Cradle to Cradle Enters Public Domain, Eyes Mainstream Acceptance
By Jonathan Bardelline
OAKLAND, CA — Cradle-to-Cradle design is going into the public domain and worldwide with the launch of the Green Products Innovation Institute (GPII), a nonprofit that will develop standards for individual products, intended to accelerate the transition to safer materials and advance California’s Green Chemistry Initiative.
GreenBiz
Published May 19, 2010
Gen Y’s Green Demands for the Workplace
By Leslie Guevarra
New York, NY — The 18- to 25-year-olds just entering, or poised to enter, the workforce aren’t likely to be satisfied with shared “hotel-style” desk assignments, drab cubicles or windowless spaces that have characterized offices in the past, according to new research that could strongly influence space and energy efficiency strategies in the corporate world.
GreenBiz
Published May 18, 2010
Texas-Sized Swath of Canadian Forest Saved by Industry-NGO Partnership
By GreenBiz Staff
TORONTO, Canada — A Canadian timber trade group and a slew of environmental NGOs have partnered to develop conservation plans for 72 million hectares of public Boreal Forest—an area larger than the state of Texas.
