Q&A: Climate Change Just One Factor in Coastal Erosion

The Paraná River delta in eastern Argentina is the only one in the world that is not disappearing, and that is due to deforestation for cultivating soybeans, explains geologist Jorge Codignotto, a former member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in this interview.

BIODIVERSITY: Earth’s Life Support Systems Failing

The world has failed to slow the accelerating extinction crisis despite 17 years of national and international efforts since the great hopes raised at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

BIODIVERSITY: Dwindling Fish Catch Could Leave a Billion Hungry

Fish catches are expected to decline dramatically in the world's tropical regions because of climate change, but may increase in the north, said a new study published Thursday.

DEVELOPMENT: Resource Crunch Signals Larger Ecological Crisis

How would development programmes look if viewed from the position of scarcity, especially the scarcity of food, water, and energy?

SANITATION-ZAMBIA: Back Policy With Funding

Water- and sanitation-related diseases cost communities dearly, particularly in rural Zambia.

DEVELOPMENT-INDIA: Farmers Vs Coca-Cola in Water Wars

As India faces its worst drought in four decades, a dispute over water resources between farmers in the Kala Dera area of western Rajasthan state and a Coca-Cola bottling plant located there has sharpened.

SOUTHERN AFRICA: Neglected Land Washing Away

Damage to wetlands high in Lesotho's Maluti mountains has impacts on the health of the whole of the Orange-Senqu river system.

HEALTH-ANGOLA: "It's Normal Here That Children Die Young"

Angelina Silva doesn’t remember the exact dates when her sons died. She just remembers their ages.

AGRICULTURE: Can South Africa Afford to Export Virtual Water?

Near the banks of the Orange River, farm manager Le Roux Viljoen sends off an SMS to a weather station and receives an almost instantaneous response telling him the temperature, wind direction and estimated evaporation index.

SOUTHERN AFRICA: Orange River Wetlands Need a Lifetime to Recover

Much of the internationally-recognised wetland surrounding the Orange River mouth has lost its rich green colour. Situated close to long-standing diamond mining operations, the river's mouth has been treated with environmental disregard for decades.

SOUTHERN AFRICA: Journey of a Working River: the Orange-Senqu

In the steep valleys of Lesotho's Maluti mountains, women carry yellow plastic buckets of water across fields of dark-brown earth; a group of men form a human chain to pass rocks between them to build a small dam wall across a mountain stream; clothes are being washed in rivers; and men draped in blankets ride donkeys or horses along the roadside.

WATER-LESOTHO: Compensation Victory for Displaced Villagers

Taelo Motseki had every reason to wear a broad smile despite the afternoon chill. His family along with 21 others displaced by Phase 1B of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project at Ha Mohale had won a decade-long struggle seeking compensation.

MEXICO: The Goal: Not a Drop Wasted

In his novel "México sediento" (Mexico in a Drought), author Francisco Moreno postulated that drought would lead to war in 2010, just as water shortages helped trigger the fight for Mexico's independence from Spain in 1810 and the Mexican Revolution in 1910.

Q&A: Regional Prescriptions for Water Management

The Orange-Senqu River has a one million square kilometre basin that covers Lesotho, South Africa, Botswana and Namibia. The water it provides is crucial to industry in South Africa, but is also relied on by farmers and domestic users.

MIDEAST: Gaza’s Water Supply Near Collapse

The International Committee of the Red Cross has warned that Gaza's access to safe supply of drinking water could cease at any time. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says outbreaks of disease could be triggered as a consequence.

MALAWI: Questions Over Water Stats

A set of new research data contests the Malawian government's claims that nearly all of the country’s urban citizens have access to clean water and sanitation.

SWAZILAND: Sunshine Brings the Gift of Water

It is break time. A handful of pupils of Sitsatsaweni Primary School are crowded around a 25-litre bucket to wash their hands before tucking into a meal of samp and beans.

ENVIRONMENT-CHINA: What Makes A Good Dam?

The Chinese government needs to engage local communities in harnessing its vast water and hydropower resources and pursuing sustainable development, says environmental advocate Yu Xiaogang, recipient of the 2009 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Participatory Social Impact Assessment for Watershed Management.

SOUTH AMERICA: Glaciers – Going, Going…Gone?

South America is perhaps most often associated with the Amazon jungle, the world's largest tropical rainforest. But along its western edge, from Ecuador to southern Chile and Argentina, it also harbours huge glaciers which are rapidly melting due to global warming.

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.

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.