Posts tagged with 'flooding'
A decade ago, the South African city of Durban was facing severe water shortages. Dam reservoirs were decreasing at alarming rates, and were 20% lower than average levels. At least one in four residents were already living in water-stressed informal settlements. ...
EDITOR’S NOTE: Sustainable Food Production for a Resilient Rosario won the 2020-2021 Prize for Cities on June 29, 2021. Learn more here. (June 29, 2021) The residents of Rosario, Argentina’s third-largest city, are no strangers to crises. When the country’s economy ...
During Caroline Owala’s childhood, flooding during rainstorms was a normal occurrence. “When it rained, it would be very difficult for us to even sleep because the flooding would get into the houses,” she told WRI. Caroline grew up in Kibera, ...
EDITOR’S NOTE: Sustainable Food Production for a Resilient Rosario won the 2020-2021 Prize for Cities on June 29, 2021. Learn more here. (June 29, 2021) City life can be deeply unfair. This was true before the COVID-19 pandemic exposed just how ...
Along the Ngong River in Mukuru, one of Nairobi’s slum neighborhoods and home to more than 100,000 people, residents face a dual threat when the rains come. First, the river rises, flooding into streets and houses. Then the water reaches ...
Capital City, a (hypothetical) seaside metropolis, has a growing population. However, much of its infrastructure was built 100 years ago and is straining from deferred maintenance, unable to meet the city’s future needs. To make matters worse, Capital City has ...
Flooding has already caused more than $1 trillion in losses globally since 1980, and the situation is poised to worsen: New analysis from WRI’s Aqueduct Floods finds that the number of people affected by floods will double worldwide by 2030. According to data from ...
Among cities with the highest rates of outward expansion are coastal cities that are extremely vulnerable to flooding from sea level rise and storm surges. Map by Resource Watch Urban expansion and sea level rise are combining to increase the ...
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 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, ...
Monsoon season has always brought torrential downpours to Gorakhpur, India, but the city has seen record-breaking rainfall in the last few years. Residents of the northern Indian city often find their streets submerged in water, their houses waterlogged. Stagnant floodwaters ...
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 ...
“Poor and vulnerable” is a common refrain in climate change stories. It’s a phrase used with good reason, to highlight how climate change disproportionately affects the disenfranchised. Economically, politically and socially vulnerable communities feel climate impacts first and hardest. They have fewer ...
When Rani, a mother of five in Khulna, Bangladesh, found that the tea stall outside her home kept flooding, she didn’t wait for a government climate resilience program to swoop in. Like many people in urban communities facing the effects ...
Urban flooding is a major and growing concern. Japan experienced floods and mudslides that killed more than 120 people last year. The Indian state of Kerala witnessed a 100-year flood that swamped several metropolitan areas. And a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on ...
