Satellite views of land subsidence in Jakarta Indonesia in 1984-1991 and 2010-2015. Data: Subsidence data courtesy of Irwan Gumilar of Geodesy Research Group of ITB; satellite images via Landsat 5 and Landsat 8. Graphic: The New York Times

Indonesia announces site of capital city to replace sinking Jakarta – Choice of Borneo for £27 billion project raises fears of forest destruction and pollution

By Jonathan Watts 26 August 2019 (The Guardian) – Indonesia has announced plans to move its capital from the climate-threatened megalopolis of Jakarta to the sparsely populated island of Borneo, which is home to some of the world’s greatest tropical rainforests. President Joko Widodo said the move was necessary because the burden on Jakarta was […]

Aerial view of cargo ships stranded on the Lena river in Siberia, 27 August 2019. In the regional capital of Yakutsk, the Lena river water level dropped so suddenly that hundreds of cargo ships and smaller boats were left stranded in the sand. It was this summer’s unusual heat that caused the record drought. Photo: Ruslan Ochirov

World’s largest permafrost river dries to a record low – “The abnormal heat recorded in Eastern Siberia in July and August, combined with lack of precipitation caused extremely shallow waters”

27 August 2019 (The Siberian Times) – Lena River fleet cannot sail after abnormal heat causes 2.5 metre water level drop. The current water level means critical delays in the summer ritual delivering vital supplies to Arctic settlements in Yakutia, Russia’s biggest region. Most of its remote corners are only accessible via water, with the […]

Aerial view of brine pools at the SQM lithium mine on the Atacama salt flat in the Atacama desert of northern Chile, 10 January 2013. Photo: Ivan Alvarado / Reuters

Farmers in Chile losing freshwater battle with lithium mines – “We’ll be left here with no water, no animals, no agriculture – with nothing”

By Grace Livingstone 15 August 2019 SANTIAGO, Chile (BBC News) – Out of habit, Sara Plaza smiles when her photo is taken, but when she talks about what has happened to the land around her home, tears start to run down her face. “There used to be beautiful lagoons down there, with hundreds of flamingos,” […]

Women fetch water from an opening made at a dried-up lake in Chennai, India, on 11 June 2019. Photo: P. Ravikumar / Reuters

India is running out of water – “If nothing changes, and fast, things will get much worse, with severe water scarcity on the horizon for hundreds of millions”

By Bill Spindle and Gareth Phillips 19 August 2019 LEH, India (The Wall Street Journal) – The Ladakh region of northern India is one of the world’s highest, driest inhabited places. For centuries, meltwater from winter snows in the Himalayan mountains sustained the tiny villages dotting this remote land. Now, like many other places in […]

Satellite view of Chennai Lake as it dries up, from 5 Feb 2019 to 15 July 2019. Photo: Copernicus / FT

No end to crisis in sight as drought grips India’s Chennai – “The civil strife in this country will start from water, not from religion”

By Stephanie Findlay 3 August 2019 CHENNAI (Financial Times) – Murugan Sundaramurthy’s water business is buoyant. His fleet of tanker trucks have been fanning out across the countryside around Chennai for two decades, sucking water from boreholes and delivering it to homes to quench the city’s thirst. But demand today is as high as he […]

Dead fish lie on the parched bed of the Chembarambakkam reservoir in India, 19 May 2019. Photo: The News Minute

Amid drought, plants in Chennai guzzle 21 million liters of groundwater per day – “We are moving towards a groundwater disaster. On one hand, the surface water resources are being destroyed, and on the other groundwater resources are being over-exploited.”

By Yogesh Kabirdoss 22 July 2019 CHENNAI (TNN) – Drought-prone Tamil Nadu has the highest number of licensed packaged drinking water and carbonated beverages units in the country. These water-guzzling plants operating in and around Chennai draw at least 21 million litres of water every day. For the record, water-starved Tamil Nadu has 40 percent […]

Map of world water stress projected to 2020, 2030, and 2040. Data: World Resources Institute; United Nations. Graphic: The New York Times

A quarter of humanity faces looming water crises – “The picture is alarming in many places around the world”

By Somini Sengupta and Weiyi Cai 6 August 2019 BENGALURU, India (The New York Times) – Countries that are home to one-fourth of Earth’s population face an increasingly urgent risk: The prospect of running out of water. From India to Iran to Botswana, 17 countries around the world are currently under extremely high water stress, […]

Graphs from the “Climate Change and Land 2019” report by the IPCC, showing changes relative to 1961 of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, world agricultural production, food demand, and desertification and land degradation. Graphic: IPCC

World food security increasingly at risk due to “unprecedented” climate change impact, new UN report warns

8 August 2019 (UN News) – More than 500 million people today live in areas affected by erosion linked to climate change, the UN warned on Thursday, before urging all countries to commit to sustainable land use to help limit greenhouse gas emissions before it is too late. Speaking at the launch of a Special […]

Table showing how many Earths humanity would require if everybody in the world lived like the citizens of selected nations, according to Global Footprint Network in 2019. For the U.S., five Earths would be required. For India, 0.7 Earths would be required. Graphic: Global Footprint Network

Earth Overshoot Day 2019 is July 29, the earliest ever

OAKLAND, California, 23 July 2019 – On 29 July 2019, humanity will have used nature’s resource budget for the entire year, according to Global Footprint Network, an international sustainability organization that has pioneered the Ecological Footprint. It is Earth Overshoot Day. Its date has moved up two months over the past 20 years to the […]

Villagers in Maharashtra state climb on a water truck to attach hoses for their daily water supply during India’s crippling drought of 2019. Photo: Al Jazeera

Inside India’s water crisis: Living with drought and dry taps – “There is no rainfall, so the land is of no use. We can’t grow anything.”

MAHARASHTRA, 27 July 2019 (Al Jazeera) – This year, large parts of India have seen the worst drought in decades. The monsoon, which usually provides some relief, was weeks late and when it finally arrived, it was once again deficient, with less rainfall than expected. Despite India’s economic growth in recent years, it remains one […]

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