World Bank: Water scarcity poses a greater risk of turmoil under climate change – Global water shortages to deliver ‘severe hit’ to economies

By Pola Lem4 May 2016 (ClimateWire) – Water scarcity is expected to increase globally as populations boom and climate change sharpens uncertainty around the resource’s availability, according to a report by the World Bank. The conclusion adds to a growing body of research, and it comes days before this year’s Climate Action 2016 summit in […]

Great Barrier Reef bleaching is just one symptom of ecosystem collapse across Australia

By Dale Nimmo, David Lindenmayer, John Woinarski, Ralph Mac Nally, Shaun Cunningham2 May 2016 (The Conversation) – Media reports around the world have brought the mass coral bleaching of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef into people’s offices and homes. With 93% of individual reefs showing bleaching, the devastation among researchers, celebrities and the public is palpable. […]

This gated community insists California drought is over, wants green lawns again

By Joseph Serna26 April 2016 (Los Angeles Times) – The warning was stern and unequivocal: The days of unkempt, browning lawns in the gated community of Blackhawk were officially over. “We believe that allowing the drought to negatively impact the landscaping at any Blackhawk home does a disservice to property values throughout the community,” the […]

Historic drought forces Zimbabwe to sell off wildlife – ‘Zimbabwe is facing one of its worst droughts ever, even worse than 1992 when thousands of wildlife were decimated’

4 May 2016 (AFP) – Drought-hit Zimbabwe has invited local farmers and private game rangers to buy wild animals as it destocks national game reserves to save fauna from starvation, the wildlife authority said Wednesday. Parks and wildlife authority spokeswoman Caroline Washaya said it has asked individuals and private game keepers to step in and […]

Video: Largest wildfire evacuation in Alberta’s history forces tens of thousands of Fort McMurray residents to flee

[Live updates from CBC: Breaking updates on the Fort McMurray wildfire] 4 May 2016 (CBC News) – Fire officials battling a raging wildfire in Fort McMurray, Alberta, are braced for another hot, dry and windy day, warning that the situation could be as bad or worse than the day before, when whole neighbourhoods burned down […]

Time to rethink Nestlé water permit in San Bernardino Mountains

By Gary Earney2 May 2016 (Press Enterprise) – The United States Forest Service is proposing to issue Nestlé Waters North America a new five-year special use permit to continue water extractions from Strawberry Creek in the San Bernardino Mountains next to Rimforest, on public land owned by you. In my professional opinion, that may damage […]

Food system shock: Global warming’s greatest threat to civilization

By Jeff Masters29 April 2016  (wunderground.com) – The greatest threat of climate change to civilization over the next 40 years is likely to be climate change-amplified extreme droughts and floods hitting multiple major global grain-producing “breadbaskets” simultaneously. A “Food System Shock” report issued in 2015 by insurance giant Lloyd’s of London outlined a plausible extreme […]

UN relief chief: ‘Worst case scenarios’ could become reality without more funding for El Niño response – $2.2 billion funding gap ‘alarming’

26 April 2016 (UN) – With 60 million people across the world affected by droughts, floods and other extreme weather events triggered by El Niño, the top United Nations relief official today called on the international community to act now to address urgent humanitarian needs and support building communities’ resilience to future shocks. “I am […]

We’re running out of water, and the world’s powers are very worried – UN and World Bank chiefs announce joint high-level panel on water

By Nathan Halverson11 April 2016  (Reveal) – Secret conversations between American diplomats show how a growing water crisis in the Middle East destabilized the region, helping spark civil wars in Syria and Yemen, and how those water shortages are spreading to the United States. Classified U.S. cables reviewed by Reveal from The Center for Investigative […]

World heading for catastrophe over natural disasters, risk expert warns – ‘We’ll see many more examples of cascading crises, where one event triggers another event, which triggers another event’

By Sam Jones24 April 2016 (The Guardian) – The world’s failure to prepare for natural disasters will have “inconceivably bad” consequences as climate change fuels a huge increase in catastrophic droughts and floods and the humanitarian crises that follow, the UN’s head of disaster planning has warned. Last year, earthquakes, floods, heatwaves and landslides left […]

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