Corruption

Provision of Clean Water Threatened

By Joy Elliott

UNITED NATIONS, New York—From bribes of a few dollars to kickbacks and embezzlement running into the hundreds of millions of dollars, corruption relating to water is undermining the health and well-being of billions of people around the world.

Dr. Huguette
Labelle,
Transparency
International

That’s the conclusion of a book-length study by Transparency International, an organization with headquarters in Berlin that has been tracking corruption in business and government for years.

In the new study, “The Global Corruption Report 2008: Corruption in the Water Sector,” Transparency International concentrated for the first time on water. The theme of its global report last year was corruption in the judiciary.

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Pollution

SEATTLE: A River Runs Through it; But What A River It Is

By Jessica Partnow

SEATTLE – The Duwamish River is Seattle’s industrial backbone, a source of much of the city’s history, and one of the country’s most contaminated chemical waste sites. Gary Thomsen, a high school history teacher who has devoted much of his career to studying the history of the river, says the now-polluted river valley once boasted “the most fertile soil in the world, second only to the Amazon River.”

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Scarcity

Jeffrey Sachs Looks To The Future: “No One Will Take Water for Granted.”

Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and one of the world’s leading experts on economic development and the environment, says he sees major problems with water in much of the world and that “we have not been attentive” to them.

In a video interview with Joseph B. Treaster, the editor of 1h2o, Dr. Sachs said that “at least some of the roots of the conflict” in Darfur in the Sudan can be traced “to great water stress, declining rainfall and rising population.”

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Pollution

Northern Peru: Jungle Rivers Where the Sweet Water No Longer Flows

By Kelly Hearn

Nueva Jerusalén, Peru - Tomas Carijano sat at the front of the canoe, whittling the wooden dart to a deadly point, a blowgun propped against his knee. Then, with a nod, he gave the signal.

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Scarcity

The Death of A Lake: Nobody Took Care of It; A Cactus Rises Where Fishing Boats Once Bobbed

By Sarah Stuteville

HARAR, Ethiopia - Girma Moges is angry. He was here in eastern Ethiopia four years ago when the pump he managed for a decade stopped forever. And he’s still here now, just outside the ancient walled city of Harar.

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Scarcity

Walking for Water: An Exhausting Job That Never Ends

By Sarah Stuteville

DILLO, Ethiopia - “Just breathe,” I tell myself as I slowly shuffle up the dusty gravel path. “One breath with each step.” I have a muddy yellow plastic can strapped to my back. It is filled with water and weighs 50 pounds, close to a third as much as I weigh. It is hard for me to walk, but I am trying to follow the cracked plastic sandals in front of me.

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The Business of Water In An East African Shanty Town

By Sarah Stuteville

NAIROBI, Kenya--As day breaks over the rusty tin roofs and makeshift homes of the sprawling Kibera slum in Nairobi, the water sellers are already at their water tanks, waiting for their first customers.

Selling water in one of the world’s largest slums is a good business. On most days the vendors charge 5 cents for five gallons, 100 times the cost of piped water provided by the city. But the city does not send water to the residents of Kibera--at any price.

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You can lend your voice to discussions taking place online about global water issues. 1H2o is partnering with helium.com in another effort to bring awareness of the global water crisis through the creation of media on the subject. Click on one of the titles below to participate and compete in the 1H2o Citizen Journalism Awards Contest.

Current Contest Question

What are some examples of corruption involving water and what is the impact of the corruption on people and communities?

1 of 12

By Jeanette Mcdonough

In the American west water has a volatile history. In fact water has been the cause of range wars and murders. For example in the 1870's water was the impetus of the Lake County Wars in Colorado (WHERE THE BODIES ARE Shaputis June 1995). The fight over control of local irrigation rights resulted in murder and mayhem. According to historical accounts a mob lead by a local rancher murdered a competitor named George Harrington over water rights. The wars culminated in a serious of mysterious
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Editor's Blog

Joseph B. Treaster: Water and The World

You Can Hear the Splash of Dolphins

MIAMI, Fla. – It’s been an unusual summer in the north end of Biscayne Bay: Blessedly quiet.

For years, I’ve been watching life on the bay from my apartment in a little place half way between Miami and Miami Beach. Elegant homes and a few condo towers rise on the distant shore. In the other direction, you’ve got the skyline of downtown Miami.

Usually, from my third-story perch, I have what amounts to a box seat for a glamorous boat show. They test ocean-racing boats a few hundred yards out, and within easy baseball-throwing range you get a nearly constant parade of Cigarette boats, day-fishers, pokey family cruisers, darting jet skis, and the assertive skiffs of law enforcement. Together, the boats create what I call the Marine Engine Ensemble. You often hear members of the Ensemble before you see them. Some of the vessels supplement the throaty roar of their engines with high-volume salsa and rock and rap.

The show is often fun and entertaining. But it is not quiet.

This summer, it’s been different. It has been so quiet you can hear the splash of dolphins breaking the surface - and their raspy huffing as they suck in fresh air. Schools of mullet churn the water and you no longer have to imagine the swishing sound. When pelicans climb out of their sweeping glides, you hear their wings beating the sky.

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Belgrade: The Tap Water Seems Fine, But There’s More to the Story

BELGRADE, Serbia – This is a place where tourists are told it is safe to drink water from the tap. And that seems to be true.

I’ve just spent nearly a week in Belgrade in June with several hundred editors and publishers from around the world, members of the influential International Press Institute. Many of them were drinking the tap water and there was no run on medical facilities, as far as I could tell.

But there are plenty of environmental concerns in Serbia and the five other countries that make up the former Yugoslavia, still recovering from a decade of war in the 1990s.

Belgrade sits majestically at the confluence of the Danube and Sava Rivers, on a site so attractive and strategic, that it has been fought over and ruined many times, the acting mayor, Zoran Alimpic, reminded me and the visiting editors in a meeting at City Hall.

Natural beauty, yes. But both the Danube and the Sava are heavily polluted from years of heavy manufacturing, agricultural runoff and chemicals that came with the warfare.

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More Blogs & Sites

Dot Earth: Andrew C. Revkin
WaterDoc.org

World News

BBC
BBC: Science/Nature
The New York Times
The New York Times: Science
The Washington Post
Associated Press
Associated Press: Science
Reuters
Reuters: Environment
Al Jazeera: English
National Geographic

Videos

Ethiopia: Water, Climate Change and Conflict

Global climate change is making a bad situation worse. As we see in this report from the rugged region of southern Ethiopia, where drought is drying up wells, threatening an ancient way of life and fueling conflict.

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Innovate or Die - Aquaduct: Mobile Filtration Vehicle

The Aquaduct is a pedal powered vehicle that transports water and filters it while in motion.

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Lifestraw

In an effort to combat water related diseases the Lifestaw purifies water while it is being consumed.

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