Water Scarcity: merged thread

[davidbfpo]

A short 10 mins video explains 'Day Zero':

Early this year, the South African government announced that Day Zero was looming – a moment, after three years of unprecedented drought, when dam levels would be so low that taps would be turned off and people would have to fetch water at communal collection points.

After taking remedial measures, Capetonians managed to push back the date of Day Zero until next year. We visited the city to find out how the threat of an apocalyptic disaster has changed lives.

Link:https://www.theguardian.com/environm...ning-dry-video

There is only one reference to why the reservoirs are now 20% full and that it is the richer suburbs which have had to adjust the most - the townships may have 25% of the population, but use 4% of the water.

[AdamG]

Yemen is gripped by civil war—and some experts say it could be the first of many “water wars” to come, as the planet grows hotter and drier. In This Is the Way the World Ends: How Droughts and Die-Offs, Heat Waves and Hurricanes Are Converging on America, Jeff Nesbit writes of the Yemeni conflict and many other geopolitical consequences of a warming world, including the precarious future of the Indus River, under the control of China, India and Pakistan, and why Saudi Arabia’s biggest dairy company is buying farmland in the Arizona desert.

Soundcloud link to the whole shebang here -> https://www.sciencefriday.com/segmen...57e2a-53934117

[davidbfpo]

Reminded yesterday about the impending, if not current drought in Southern Iraq; alas that article is behind a pay-wall. Instead there is this BBC report after rioting in Basra:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-...-in-basra-iraq

There are a couple of earlier reports too:https://www.aljazeera.com/news/middl...193258236.html and http://www.bayancenter.org/en/wp-con.../980987665.pdf