WATER-SOUTHERN AFRICA: Managing An Unpredictable Environment

The water available in the Limpopo River basin, which stretches across Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe and Mozambique, is both in great demand and highly variable. Managing it effectively and to the satisfaction of all users is a challenge.

WATER-SOUTHERN AFRICA: Research Not Trickling Down To Farmers

Farmers could be losing tonnes of crops every harvest just because no one has bothered to tell them that scientists have found more effective methods of using water to farm.

Q&A: “Sanitation Is Inextricably Linked to Human Rights”

Some 1.6 million people die each year due to water and sanitation related diseases, millions of girls do not go to school because of lack of toilets, and prison detainees are denied access to adequate sanitation in some countries as a form of punishment, clear violations of the rights to health, education, and many other human rights.

WATER-NAMIBIA: For What Does It Profit a Man…

"Our profit so far is 5,000 Namibian dollars, divided by twenty people," reports Anna Nauses. Silence descends on the office of the Prosopis Project in Okombahe as all do the math. Sixteen months of hard labour felling water-thirsty trees along the Omaruru River has yielded just 30 U.S. dollars per person.

NAMIBIA: Garden Project Grants Modest Independence

Life in Omaruru? Put it this way: even the river that gives the town its name doesn’t always make it down. In this semi-desert part of Namibia, existence is a daily battle against poverty. A women’s gardening project is trying to change this.

WATER-NAMIBIA: Running A Dry River

The Omaruru River basin is one of the first in Namibia to establish a basin management committee. Its members have a difficult balancing act to perform with a water resource that’s already being utilised to its maximum.

DEVELOPMENT: New Threats Aggravate Africa's Water Crisis

The widespread water scarcity in the African continent, impacting on the lives of nearly 300 million people, may be aggravated further by several new threats, including climate change, transboundary disputes and the negative fallout from military conflicts.

INDIA: When Toilets Were as Scarce as Hen’s Teeth

Dr. Bindeshwar Patak, the 2009 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate and founder of a grassroots sanitation movement in India, recounts the days before his country's independence in 1947 when toilets were a rare sight in remote villages and towns under British rule.

Q&A: "Safe Drinking Water for Astronauts, Not Slum Dwellers"

"We can provide astronauts with a safe supply of drinking water when they travel to the moon, but we cannot provide the same service to slum dwellers in Kibera, Nairobi or Dharavi, Mumbai," Anders Berntell, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), told a gathering of over 2,400 participants at the annual World Water Week concluding Friday.

Q&A: Knowledge Barriers Key Factor in Sanitation Crisis

Despite longstanding promises by world leaders to halve, by 2015, the number of people without basic sanitation, 2.5 billion still lack access to basic sanitation, and 1.2 billion don't have any form of sanitation at all.

DEVELOPMENT: Should Water Be Legislated as a Human Right?

The growing commercialisation of water - and the widespread influence of the bottling industry worldwide - is triggering a rising demand for the legal classification of one of the basic necessities of life as a human right.

ZIMBABWE: No Water, Just a Bill

City council turns off the water. National minister in charge says turn it back on. Domestic and commercial users alike dispute their unpaid bills. The shadow of a cholera epidemic looms over it all. Must be Harare.

TANZANIA: Solutions to Dar's Water Problems in the Pipeline

In the nine months since she moved to the Dar es Salaam neighbourhood of Kinondoni, Anna Christopher has only seen water running from her taps once.

WATER-TANZANIA: Who Pays the Piper?

When John Rubara* and his family moved into their new house in Dar es Salaam's Tabata Kimanga, a fast-growing middle-income neighbourhood in Temeke district, the water company disconnected their supply because the previous owner was in arrears.

ZIMBABWE: Water Rationing Looms in Bulawayo

Bulawayo city council is to tighten a water rationing programme relaxed last year because residents are rapidly pushing up the city's daily consumption by using municipal water supplies for non-domestic activities.

ZIMBABWE: Neglect Sanitation at Your Peril

A functioning public toilet has become a rare sight in Bulawayo. Across this southern Zimbabwean city of about two million residents, public toilets have all but stopped functioning, the buildings now more useful as platforms for graffiti and campaign posters than as public conveniences where people answer the call of nature.

SOUTH AFRICA: Rights to the River

Millions of litres of water are being unlawfully diverted into dams set up by South Africa's major industries, big mining companies and commercial farmers - with potentially devastating consequences for management of the resource.

LESOTHO-WATER: One Dollar Per Square Metre, Now Move

The construction of a two billion dollar dam in Metolong, some 35 kilometres outside of Lesotho’s capital Maseru, is being welcomed by people in and around the city who will gain access to clean and safe drinking water when construction is completed in 2013.

Q&A: Sanitation No Longer a Dirty Word in India

In India, many moons ago, nobody dared talk about toilets - a subject that was taboo, particularly at mealtime.

SOUTHERN AFRICA: Floods – Breaking the Cycle

The fourth largest river in Africa, the mighty Zambezi, is a lifeblood to 32 million people, from land-locked Zambia to Mozambique on the Indian Ocean. But its blessing is also its curse.

HEALTH: Private Sector Boosts Public Toilets in Poorer Nations

The United Nations is disappointed that most governments in the developing world have made relatively little progress in providing basic sanitation facilities to nearly 2.5 billion people who still have no access to toilets.