Posts tagged with 'water'
Tackling Inequality in Cities Is Essential for Fighting COVID-19
Tackling Inequality in Cities Is Essential for Fighting COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a disruptive new normal for everyone through shelter-in-place orders and social distancing guidelines. But for the billions of urban poor, these guidelines aren’t just burdensome; they’re essentially impossible. Social distancing is a critically important response ...
Combating the Coronavirus Without Clean Water
Combating the Coronavirus Without Clean Water
As the coronavirus crisis spreads throughout the world, it is increasingly clear that people with the least access to essential services like water will feel the most dramatic effects. Major health organizations advise washing hands more frequently – for at least ...
Chile’s Protests Offer Lessons on Social Inequality and Climate Action
Chile’s Protests Offer Lessons on Social Inequality and Climate Action
Chile withdrew as host of this year’s UN climate conference amid widespread unrest, but that doesn’t mean that fighting climate change should be pushed into second place behind addressing social inequality. On the contrary, the situation in Chile shows all countries that the social and climate ...
Responding to Day Zero Equitably: Water Crisis Lessons from Cape Town and Chennai
Responding to Day Zero Equitably: Water Crisis Lessons from Cape Town and Chennai
When Cape Town, South Africa, and Chennai, India nearly ran out of water, these two cities managed to avert Day Zero with solutions that were creative and effective but far from perfect. In Cape Town, there were mile-long queues of people waiting for hours for water. ...
Tamil Nadu’s Seasonal Swings in Water Stress: A State with Too Much and Too Little
Tamil Nadu’s Seasonal Swings in Water Stress: A State with Too Much and Too Little
Tamil Nadu state in south India suffers from seasonal extremes in water availability. Sometimes there is too much water, and in other seasons not enough. Chennai, the coastal capital of 10 million people, experienced a “Day Zero” crisis this summer, ...
We’re Grossly Underestimating the World’s Water Access Crisis
We’re Grossly Underestimating the World’s Water Access Crisis
In Cape Town, South Africa, and Chennai, India, “Day Zero” events where cities run out of water have drawn global media attention. But while these catastrophes seem like rare, temporary crises caused by droughts or mismanagement, life without ample water ...
17 Countries, Home to One-Quarter of the World’s Population, Face Extremely High Water Stress
17 Countries, Home to One-Quarter of the World’s Population, Face Extremely High Water Stress
Once-unthinkable water crises are becoming commonplace. Reservoirs in Chennai, India’s sixth-largest city, are nearly dry right now. Last year, residents of Cape Town, South Africa narrowly avoided their own “Day Zero” water shut-off. And the year before that, Rome rationed water to conserve scarce ...
4 Emerging Concepts That Could Transform Cities
4 Emerging Concepts That Could Transform Cities
Big ideas can forever alter the fate of cities when they are written into cement, steel and stone. When St. Petersburg, Russia, was created in 1703 by Peter the Great, he envisioned the new capital as an emblem of a modern ...
PODCAST: How Chennai's Water Got to Day Zero
PODCAST: How Chennai’s Water Got to Day Zero
One of South India’s biggest cities is almost out of water. A year after Cape Town, South Africa, had its own “Day Zero” crisis, the reservoirs in Chennai are nearly dry, leaving millions in this usually-wet coastal city wondering if they ...
How Does a Flood-prone City Run Out of Water? Inside Chennai’s “Day Zero” Crisis
How Does a Flood-prone City Run Out of Water? Inside Chennai’s “Day Zero” Crisis
Chennai faced a devastating flood in 2015 that killed hundreds of people and displaced many more. Today, the southern Indian city’s four main reservoirs are virtually dry. This crisis is not only due to lack of water. Lack of proper management is ...
5 Under-Recognized Impacts of Air Pollution
5 Under-Recognized Impacts of Air Pollution
Most of the rising global attention to air pollution focuses on the impacts that ozone, particulate matter and other pollutants have on human health. This is natural; the numbers in the headlines are striking. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that ...
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We Need a New Gold Standard for Urban Sanitation: Brian Arbogast
More than half the global population lacks access to safely managed sanitation services – 4.5 billion people. Every year, more than 340,000 children under the age of five die as a result of this problem. And we’re not solving it ...
5 Cities Show What Urban Transformation Really Looks Like
5 Cities Show What Urban Transformation Really Looks Like
Urbanization is changing the face of the planet – for better and for worse. City populations, GDP and investment are increasing exponentially. At the same time, carbon emissions are rising, more and more people are living in slums, and air pollution ...
Better Buildings Mean a Brighter Future: 3 Technologies to Decrease Energy Use
Better Buildings Mean a Brighter Future: 3 Technologies to Decrease Energy Use
Building efficiency is one of the most effective and affordable solutions for addressing climate change and capping carbon emissions. Yet it is so often drowned by discussions of electric vehicles and solar panels. Given that better buildings are a great ...
Putting the Poor First to Improve Sanitation in Kampala
Putting the Poor First to Improve Sanitation in Kampala
For decades, Kampala has raced to keep up with its own rapid growth. Set alongside Lake Victoria, the Ugandan capital more than quadrupled in physical footprint between 1991 and 2012 as population doubled to 1.5 million people. One of Kampala’s ...
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