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 […]

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 […]

Temperature forecast for Europe, 25 July 2019. Graphic: Wetterzentrale

Germany braces for fourth heatwave of summer – “That is not normal anymore. It’s everything other than normal.”

22 July 2019 (The Local) – Temperatures could exceed 38C in some parts of the Bundesrepublik this week during a record fourth summer heat wave. On Thursday temperatures around Germany will spike to up 38C – reigning in the fourth heat wave of the summer. Due to climate change, says Latif, there is double the […]

A woman wades through a flooded street during monsoon rain in Mumbai, July 2019. Photo: PTI

Deluge and drought: A tale of two Indian cities – Worst floods in 14 years cripple Mumbai while Chennai thirsts for a drop of water – “It’s scary and the problem persists every year despite government promises”

2 July 2019 (Gulf News) – Mumbai: Wall collapses in Mumbai and nearby towns, caused by the worst monsoon rains in a single day in 14 years, killed 30 people on Tuesday and disrupted rail and air traffic, prompting officials to shut schools and offices. Financial markets were open in the city of 18 million […]

A worker fills a tanker train with water, which will be transported and supplied to drought-hit city of Chennai, at Jolarpettai railway station in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, India, 11 July 2019. Photo: P. Ravikumar / REUTERS

Water train set to relieve drought-hit Indian city – Doctors forced to buy water for surgery – “We won’t be able to supply water even to the people who can pay a huge sum for a tanker of water”

By P. Ravikumar 11 July 2019 JOLARPETTAI, India (Reuters) – Indian authorities on Thursday filled tanks with water and loaded them onto a train in the southern state of Tamil Nadu to supply its manufacturing capital Chennai where reservoirs have run dry. Technicians in the railway station at Jolarpettai, located over 135 miles (217 km) […]

Groundwater levels across Chennai, June 2018 and June 2019. Wells in Anna Nagar and Choolaimedu in June 2019 were dry. Data: The Rain Centre, Chennai / Gaurav Dogra. Graphic: Reuters

Villagers accuse city of seizing water as drought parches “India’s Detroit” – “Private tankers have fitted more than eight bore wells in our village and are indiscriminately extracting thousands of liters of water every day”

By Sudarshan Varadhan 2 July 2019 CHENNAI (Reuters) – In the small village of Bangarampettai, 20 miles from India’s manufacturing capital Chennai, about 150 people last month “captured” a water tanker, breaking its windscreen and deflating its tires before handing it over to a nearby police station. People living on the outskirts of this southern […]

Residents get water from a community well in Chennai after reservoirs for the city ran dry in June 2019. The bustling capital of Tamil Nadu state usually receives 825 million litres of water a day, but authorities are currently only able to supply 60 percent of that. With temperatures regularly hitting 40 degrees Celsius, reservoirs have run dry and other water sources are dwindling each day. Photo: Arun Sankar / AFP

Why India’s Chennai has run out of water

By Nityanand Jayaraman 1 July 2019 (BBC News) – As I write this, it has rained in Chennai – the first real welcome shower, but one that lasted only 30 minutes. But, still, that has been enough to flood the streets and stall traffic. The irony is that Chennai’s vulnerability to floods and its water […]

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial