There are four key issues to consider when thinking about global water issues:
Water scarcity: In some parts of the world a changing climate is drying up traditional water sources and leading to erratic weather, leaving 1.1 billion people without access to safe water. This causes conflict over scarce resources, puts strain on the women of [...]
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Welcome! The Pulitzer Gateway on Water Wars is a place where students and teachers can interact directly with Pulitzer Center reporters — and with each other — to learn about and discuss the importance of water around the world. The public is also invited to explore the reporting, post their own story about water, and [...]
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World Toilet Day is no joke
Peter Sawyer and Maura Youngman, for the Pulitzer Center
On November 19th, World Toilet Day 2009, sanitation advocates at the U.S. Capitol made the point that going number two in the absence of sanitation is nothing to giggle about — and that access to clean water is nothing to take for [...]
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Nearly 1 billion people around the world lack access to clean water and sanitation. On a special edition of Foreign Exchange, Jon Sawyer, Executive Director of the Pulitzer Center, highlights some of the sustained Pulitzer Center water coverage, from the massive desertification of north central China to river pollution in India, from the repercussions of [...]
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Desertification is one of the most important environmental challenges facing the world today, however it is arguably the most under-reported. Desertification is the gradual transformation of arable and habitable land into desert, usually caused by climate change and/or the improper use of land. Each year, desertification and drought account for US$42 billion loss in food [...]
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Kenya’s Kakuma Refugee Camp was for years among the world’s most famous, home to the “Lost Boys” of southern Sudan and as many as 90,000 refugees and displaced persons. Today those still here are fighting for their lives, caught between “donor fatigue” and a struggle over limited resources with their Turkana neighbors that is increasingly [...]
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A couple of days ago we got a powerful glimpse of the psychology of water. Jyoti Sharma, President of the water related ngo FORCE invited me to witness the situation in and around the C sector in Vasant Kunj, South Delhi. Here, everyone stocks up on water. But whereas the slum dwellers only manage to [...]
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The majority of India’s water sources are polluted. A lack of access to safe water contributes to a fifth of its communicable diseases. Each day in the booming, nuclear-armed nation, diarrhea alone kills more than 1,600 people.
The regional scenario is even more grim given the projected impact of population pressures and global warming—which aggravates the [...]
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At the conclusion of the World Water Forum Jon Sawyer, the Pulitzer Center’s executive director, traveled to Ethiopia to report on the challenges of, and potential solutions to, the water crisis in East Africa.
See Alex Stonehill and Ernest Waititu’s reports from India here.
“Ethiopia: The Garden of Urine,” by Jon Sawyer
In the arid hills above Addis [...]
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At the conclusion of the World Water Forum Alex Stonehill and Ernest Waititu, who worked on the Pulitzer Center’s East Africa Water Wars reporting project, traveled to India to cover the growing sanitation problems the country is facing. Their reports are collected below.
“India kills her goddess,” by Ernest Waititu
NEW DELHI, India – Some hundreds of [...]
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Pulitzer Center reports from the World Water Forum, and beyond
The World Water Forum, the world’s largest water policy event, held its fifth session last month in Istanbul. Organizers boasted 33,058 participants from 192 countries, from government officials to experts and advocates, plus over a thousand accredited journalists.
Among them was Jon Sawyer, executive director of the [...]
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While Americans fret over rising gas prices and global tension over oil, the world’s poor are struggling to secure access to another, even more basic resource. Water scarcity in East Africa is fueling conflict and thwarting development while growing in step with local populations and rising global temperatures.
Though the actions of industrialized nations are primarily [...]
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Potable water is one of the hardest resources to secure in Kibera and the torrents now being unleashed will offer no relief to the estimated 1 million people here who must use their meager wages–usually less than a dollar a day–to buy water for drinking and cleaning.
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An informal private sector of water vendors takes over from there, jerry-rigging a network of cheap plastic pipes and water tanks that allow the water to be tainted with free flowing sewage. The million people who live in Kibera typically end up paying hundreds of times more than those in other Nairobi neighborhoods for water that still makes them sick.
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One billion people on Earth lack easy access to the water most of us take for granted. Global climate change is making that struggle 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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In Ethiopia, water turns to sand as climate change takes hold. “What is happening in Africa today is a warning to the world,” says one observer.
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Jessica Partnow offers this Day in the Life portrait of a water walker as typical of thousands of women around the world who have to walk miles every day just to get drinking water.
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A 14-year-old girl in a patched purple dress had already fallen. We struggled to get her upright again; she was pinned by the weight of the can on her back and our own burdens made it hard to lift her from the loose steep slope.
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RADIO: DISAPPEARING LAKE
[podcast]http://waterwars.pulitzergateway.org/wp-content/uploads/disappearinglake.mp3[/podcast]
Chala Ahmed had a dream. He wanted to build a waterfront home for his family on the shores of Lake Haramaya, in eastern Ethiopia. Now, that’s impossible. The lake has dried up. Lakes around the world are
shrinking. Some blame climate change. Others believe poor water mismanagement is the root of the problem. Whatever [...]
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East Africa’s Lake Victoria is the world’s largest tropical lake — but some experts think it may disappear within twenty years. Water levels have dropped dramatically in recent years thanks to climate change, hydroelectric dam projects and increasing pressure on the lake’s threatened resources.
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ON A FRAYED MAT ON ONE of the dusty streets of Kibera — Africa’s largest slums — in Nairobi, Sophia Mohamed sells her wares: two mangoes, five oranges, a half-dozen calcium-based chewing stones and a pan brimming with bhajia (a potato snack).
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This video features students from Olympic high school in Kenya sharing their thoughts on the importance of water in their lives.
Watch the video and then answer the questions below from Olympic students who want to know what water means to you.
In the “Ask a question” section below, you can post your questions for Olympic students [...]
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Karen C students share their thoughts on the importance of water in their lives.
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