As Iran faces one of its worst droughts in decades, President Masoud Pezeshkian has revived a long-debated plan to move the capital city Tehran. But the country needs to address first the root causes of its water bankruptcy.
Tag: drought
Years of drought followed by sudden floods have unsettled Morocco’s mountainous regions where rainfall has long been seen as a divine blessing. What is at play may be bigger than the heavens.
Every day, thousands of liters of water that would have gone down the drain are now being reused to clean streets and water gardens in Loures. Fighting climate change — one drop at a time.
Traditional irrigation canals could help balance the water supply during droughts — but only if they are protected.
While wine consumption is declining and operating costs increasing, winegrowers also face increasingly frequent and extreme climatic hazards. Is this the last straw? As the sector is preparing for a new uprooting plan, some winemakers are looking into ways to adapt to the new market needs and climatic conditions.
Crop science may lead to a revolution in potato farming, creating new varieties resistant to disease and drought.
While it has long been used to control rain, cloud seeding is now attracting growing interest in some countries, particularly China. But scientists don’t agree on either its effectiveness or its own possible harm to the environmental.
A house surrounded by an immaculate green lawn conquered the post-war United States and has become a Western ideal. But climate change is prompting homeowners — as well as institutions such as botanical gardens — to create yards that are adapted to the local climate and biodiversity.
The golf industry claims it generates 225 million euros each year in Murcia, or 0.8% of the southeastern Spanish region’s GDP, which is also the driest in Spain.
Even as technology could offer solutions to surviving as our planet gets warmer, humans themselves are innately adaptable creatures — and extreme heat could change our genes.
Armed conflicts, droughts, floods, poverty… Many factors are pushing some young people from Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger to take uncertain and dangerous migration routes. In the region of Africa just south of the Sahara, unregulated migration is increasing.
As a paramunicipal organization takes over water services from local councils, residents face high costs, shortages, contamination — and a foul odor that’s sullying the area’s reputation as a coastal paradise.
Floods have hit northern Italy after the longest drought in two centuries. Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini explains how these increasingly frequent events are being exacerbated by human activity.
Amid a severe drought, Afghan scientists are asking the international community to engage with the brutal regime.
The worst drought in 40 years, which has deepened from the effects of climate change, is hitting the young the hardest around the Horn of Africa. A close-up look at the victims, and attempts to save lives and limit lasting effects on an already fragile region in Kenya.
In the mid-17th century, the weather in China got colder. The frequency of droughts and floods increased while some regions were wiped out by tragic famines. And the once-unstoppable Ming dynasty began to lose power.
China has endured two months of scorching heatwaves and drought that have affected power supply in the country. Spooked by future energy security, Beijing is reinvesting heavily in coal with disastrous implications for climate change.
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Let’s Stop Calling It “Extreme” Weather
As measures to curb climate change move slowly in the face of deadly new weather patterns, we must immediately mitigate the havoc it has begun to cause around the world.
In the northern Italian region of Veneto, drought has forced half the municipalities to ration water resources. In contrast, the region’s Coca-Cola plant has upped production, using even more water that it gets for a cheap price.
The droughts and extreme temperatures due to climate change, together with the abandonment of the countryside, have caused fierce fires in Spain that have devastate the livelihoods of the few people who still live there.
The growing environmental movement in the West, wittingly or not, has given no attention to mass protests in Iran against the clerical regime, most recently focused on the drought conditions and other ecological risks. Had ecologists been hoping to sign a green pact with Tehran?
CERVERE — It hasn’t rained in two months. The corn has not grown. Six out of ten hectares of this plain field are completely parched. “It’s late now,” says Giovanni Bedino, running his dark fingers through the dry leaves of the corn. The farmer, now 59, has been working the land since he was 15. […]
Chinese-backed projects are bringing irreperable damage to the Mekong, the largest freshwater fish source in the world feeding millions of people living along its banks.
With July recorded as the driest month since 1959 in France, farmers — who make up half of water consumption in the country — face a problematic water shortage. The agricultural world is now working on solutions to better manage this precious resource.
In northern Colombia, large-scale banana and palm oil estates have long used their clout to control land and water resources and leave peasant farmers high and dry.
The populous Golden State will need more than short-term emergency funding to solve its groundwater contamination and depletion problems.
Around the world, local water shortages are a very real sign of the effects of climate change. Drought conditions in certain areas of India have recently left some cities reeling, leading to new political tensions. Meanwhile, last weekend, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Washington, D.C. and around the United States to demand […]
-Analysis- LIMA — Peruvian historian Javier Puente’s latest research includes some very interesting maps. The first (and most extensive) covers the area affected by drought as a result of the El Niño weather phenomenon between 1982 and 1983 (when it was unusually intense). The second, relying on data from Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee, shows […]
It took them 108 years, but the Chicago Cubs finally won the World Series after what reporters are describing as “the greatest World Series Game 7 ever.” This is how the Chicago Tribune described the decisive game against the Cleveland Indians that lasted into the early hours Thursday: It “lasted almost five hours, featuring some […]
Climate change is drying up the Earth and making Bolivians search for new livelihoods in Latin America’s poorest country.
ACCRA — It’s a hot and humid night in this capital city and a long line waits at the entrance of Papaye, Ghana’s top fast-food chain and a symbol of the country’s burgeoning middle class. But the restaurant seems closed, its neon lights turned off. The restaurant’s staff struggle to turn on the generator. A […]
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Venezuela To Public Workers: Stay At Home
Venezuelan public workers woke up Wednesday to newspaper headlines that told them to stay home. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced in a televised address Tuesday that the government is slashing additional working hours for the country’s 2.8 million public workers in a bid to save energy, reducing the working week from four to two days. […]
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El Nino Forces Water Rationing In Medellin
MEDELLIN — Colombian meteorologists blame weather phenomenon El Niño for unprecedented weather changes, bringing both extreme drought and rapid evaporation of water to the South American country. Water supplier Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM) has announced that citizens in the Colombian city must reduce their water consumption by 10% if local water supplies are to […]
TOLIARA — The heat and the years have taken a heavy toll on Rebokane Mahatsanga’s frail, scaly-skinned body. Squatting, almost prone, among a few bad-looking ears of corn on his patch of land, he doesn’t quite know his age anymore. “I think I’ll be 100 soon,” he says, his eyes half-closed. People don’t really celebrate […]
TEL AVIV — From the beautiful beach of Palmachim, on the Israeli coast, it’s hard to picture what’s happening below your feet, where 624,000 cubic meters of sea water are being sucked up every day by two enormous pipes and transported more than two kilometers inland to be transformed into drinkable water. Welcome to Sorek, […]
As vegetable wholesalers around Buenos Aires ignore government calls to moderate prices, angry shoppers may resort to their last weapon.
CARUARU — For months now, water taps in some of northeastern Brazil’s cities have been running dry. Not during certain hours of the day. Or certain days of the week. But all the time. Morning and night. Day after day, with the exception of just two days per month. And it’s not just residents being […]
-Essay- SAO PAULO — It’s the future here, writing with a warning to brace yourself. How I would love to tell you that in 35 years you’ll be able to go back in time, fix your mistakes and change history. Sadly, you won’t be able to do that. The United Nations Climate Change Conference in […]
A persistent drought is threatening California’s storied vineyards, which employ hundreds of thousands in the Golden State alone. But there is still water, for now.
For months now the southeastern region of Brazil has been experiencing the most severe drought in living memory. The already crippling water crisis was made worse by a mercilessly scorching summer that saw record high temperatures in São Paulo, Brazil’s most populous city. The suffocating heat has complicated matters further still by prompting people to […]