Posts tagged with 'water quality'
I’ve watched in horror as Europe burns. Ferocious wildfires have swept through Spain, France and now Greece, scorching towns and forests and spewing toxic smoke. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes. Many will have little left to return to. European ...
Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, sits where Lake Kivu drains into the Ruzizi River along the border with Rwanda. The city’s steep hillsides turn heavy rains into fast-moving runoff that overwhelms drains, damages roads and threatens downstream communities. It’s ...
On rainy days, Meliana Mei walks along an elevated pathway from her home in Makassar, Indonesia, to the market. Water collects in trenches below the path and drains away, giving her a much safer way to reach her destination. “Our ...
Twenty years ago, the forested slopes above Alpine Acres — a small community at the source of the Weber River in Summit County, Utah — were overgrown with dry brush and primed for wildfire. With only one road in and ...
The center of gravity for climate progress is shifting. Increasingly, many of the countries driving the global climate transition are those that have contributed the least to historical emissions yet are among the most vulnerable to climate impacts. Emerging economies are showing ...
Resilience in cities is often framed around large-scale infrastructure projects and sweeping policy shifts. We see headlines about billion-dollar climate adaptation plans, smart cities leveraging AI for disaster response and ambitious net-zero pledges. But some of the most impactful solutions ...
In the heart of Nairobi’s Mathare slums, a quiet but powerful revolution is growing – one plant at a time. Teenage mothers, often marginalized and overlooked, are transforming their lives and their community through urban farming and organizing. Their efforts ...
Extreme weather events like floods and droughts are becoming more frequent and intense around the globe, disrupting communities and the infrastructure they rely on. In 2024 alone, the world endured 58 disasters that wreaked over a billion dollars in damages each. Yet ...
Africa’s cities, from large metropolises to smaller towns, are increasingly characterized by growing urban sprawl. Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, is expanding by about 2,000 people and 5 hectares (10 football fields) every day, according to a World Bank estimate. Kumasi, an intermediary ...
For the 21 million residents of Lagos, Nigeria, climate change is not a distant concept — it is a current reality. Over the past decade, the city has experienced devastating floods, exacerbated by the loss of over half of its wetlands ...
Moldova’s capital city, Chișinău, recently secured a €20 million investment to tackle flooding and pollution of the Bîc River, aiming to transform it into a valuable recreational amenity for 100,000 residents and mitigate future flood risks. This funding, which combines loans from ...
Brazilians are currently living in a dystopian landscape. Thick smoke, oppressive heat and eerily orange sunsets blanket both major cities and small villages. Hundreds of cities are exposed to dangerous levels of air pollution while thousands of hectares of forest burn. ...
The Kham River in India, which flows through the city of Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (formerly known as Aurangabad), fluctuates from a torrent during monsoon season to barely a trickle during dry months. Years ago, the Kham provided drinking water to the ...
The Guacheneque Páramo, where the Bogotá River originates, represents the second largest source of drinking water for the city of Bogotá, Colombia. It is a key ecosystem that supplies water to approximately 25% of the city’s 7 million inhabitants. However, due to ...
New data from WRI’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas show that 25 countries — housing one-quarter of the global population — face extremely high water stress each year, regularly using up almost their entire available water supply. And at least 50% of the ...
