World Water Crisis | Blue Living Ideas

Canada Takes Water Awareness Lead

Posted on Jul 08, 2010 by Scott James.

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Say what you will about Canada being up on the latest trends in fashion or music, but our neighbor to the North may be on the verge of setting the course in national water management policy. Recently ministers from across the country met to talk about how best to protect and preserve Canada’s water from the effects of climate change- not to argue about whether it was happening or what the economic issues around it are. The premiers and territorial leaders of British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunavut met for the Western Premiers’ Conference and agreed that immediate action is needed to conserve Canada’s fresh water supplies. The leaders agreed to a Water Charter, stating that climate change has affected the water situation, and that water is “an essential component of all life on Earth and there is no substitute.”
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The Other Coastal Problem: Rising Seas

Posted on Jul 02, 2010 by Scott James.

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Rising sea levels will have an effect on coastal cities, and while the BP Gulf oil leak is getting the press these days, sea level rise from climate change will have an even more long-term and potentially dramatic effect. With the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicting a 7 – 23 inch rise by 2011 (with the possibility of 54 inch rise with accelerated Greenland and Arctic melting), communities on both the East and West coasts are taking measures now to prepare for what they know is coming, making incremental changes and learning from past disasters.
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Is Traditional Water Management the Future?

Posted on May 26, 2010 by Scott James.

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The world’s water situation is only going to get more challenging in the coming years. There will be more people a water supply that is increasingly polluted and often distributed with aging infrastructure. Clearly we will need to embrace new methods of water management- is it possible that those methods have been around for thousands of years? The International Traditional Knowledge Institute (ITKI), a new research group founded in Bagno a Ripoli, Italy, is teaching that traditional methods from the Sahara, Ethiopia and Babylon will work well with new technologies like solar power.
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Is Climate Change Genocide?

Posted on Apr 22, 2010 by Scott James.

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Climate change and rising temperatures are widely believed to be causing the retreat of glaciers and lower river flows. According to researchers, that is what’s happening to the Andean glaciers. Evo Morales, President of Boliva, believes there should be an international court of environmental justice- and many Bolivians agree with him. In fact, Boliva’s UN Ambassador is preparing to present a proposal to Mexico’s COP16 to create an international court of justice.
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Rivers in the Desert: Solar-Powered Desalination

Posted on Apr 15, 2010 by Scott James.

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Water crises and water shortages are increasing around the world- at this point there are 1.2 billion people in 40 countries without reliable access to clean water. But what if there were a way to use the sun to turn oceans into drinking water? IBM and King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), the national research and development organization in Saudi Arabia, announced this week that they are collaborating on research to create a solar-powered desalination plant. The project combines two technologies that IBM and KACST have been working on: ultra-high concentrator photovoltaic (UHCPV) technology and energy-efficient filtration through nanotechnology.
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