Posts tagged with 'flooding'
City life can be deeply unfair. This was true before the COVID-19 pandemic exposed just how differently the rich and poor are able to cope with lockdowns, from ability to work from home to access to green space. The pandemic’s ...
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 ...
Climate change affects poor and marginalized communities first and hardest. These effects are happening now – not in a far-fetched future. Particularly in cities, a lack of access to basic services, a long history of unsustainable urban development, and political ...
As India prepared to commemorate its 72nd Independence Day last month, the southern state of Kerala saw little reason to celebrate. The monsoon rainfall this year was heavier than normal and had reached alarming levels. On an average, districts received ...
Cape Town is running out of water. After three years of intense drought, South Africa’s second-largest city is just a few months away from “Day Zero,” the day when the city government will shut off water taps for most homes and businesses. The impacts ...
