WATER-UGANDA: Creating a ‘Safe Water Chain’

Uganda spends close to $10 million each year treating waterborne diseases; the productive time lost to illness and caring for the sick has an even greater financial impact. But residents of Katosi village on the shores of Lake Victoria aren't waiting for the government to find a solution.

AGRICULTURE-MALAWI: Water Makes the Difference

Water has become the very essence of economic development for a rural community of Ngolowindo, in Malawi’s lake district of Salima, where households are reducing poverty thanks to irrigation.

ENVIRONMENT: Coping in a World of “Peak Water”

As more than 20,000 people meet in Istanbul for a major week-long conference on future management of the world's water supplies, women's groups are working to ensure that policy decisions about this critical natural resource take their concerns into account.

DEVELOPMENT: Corruption Drains Water…

Several civil society organisations are planning anti-corruption drives to combat the wheeling-dealing considered a major factor in the world water crisis.

MIDEAST: Gazans Struggle for Clean Drinking Water

As environmental experts, NGOs and government officials gather in Istanbul this week to attend the Fifth World Water Forum, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has drawn attention to the critical water situation in Gaza.

Q&A: Climate Change Will Hit Water First

Whether through drought, floods, melting of ice or a rise in sea level, water will be the first to feel the effects of climate change, says Dr. Mark Smith, who heads the water programme at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world's largest environmental network.

NICARAGUA: Cleaning Up ‘World’s Biggest Toilet’

After dumping its untreated wastewater into lake Managua for more than 80 years, the capital of Nicaragua has started to clean up the huge source of water in this country, where 80 percent of fresh water sources are polluted.

ENVIRONMENT-PAKISTAN: Save the Indus Plead Delta Folk

"There was a time when we used to cast our nets into the river [Indus] and haul in no less than 400 to 500 ‘palla’ fish at one go," says 70-year-old Hamzo Jat.

DEVELOPMENT: Preparing for Water Quarrels, if not Wars

The Fifth World Water Forum begins in Istanbul Mar. 16 in the face of some stark facts: of the world's water, 97.5 percent is the sea, and of the remaining, 70 percent is frozen in polar icecaps. That leaves precious little for 6.76 billion people around the world, expected to grow to 9 billion by 2050.

Q&A: Plenty of Water in the Desert, if Only…

Most policy makers draw a bleak picture of dramatic water scarcity in the Middle East, warning of water wars to come. But there is plenty of water in the desert, says Tunisian geographer and water expert Habib Ayeb.

ENVIRONMENT: 'Capital Shapes the Creation of Waste'

The South African government has been heavily criticised by environmental justice NGO groundWork for failing to produce accurate data on the production of waste in the country.

Q&A: Water Crisis Could Affect Billions

The United Nations has warned that about half the world's population - over three billion people by today's count - may suffer water shortages by the year 2025.

WATER-NAMIBIA: ‘Decentralisation’: Code for Recovering Costs From the Poor

What if a well-intended programme to democratise water management is really a poverty trap? This is a question a soon to be published study on Namibian rural water supply poses to decision makers.

WATER-NAMIBIA: Policy to Create a Water Scarcity?

Several 20 litre buckets of water are crammed inside the small enclosure around the only tap in Epingiro, a small gathering of kraals in the Kavango woodlands in northern Namibia.

ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Goa Agitated by Shady Real Estate Deals

Simmering resentment against major, concrete development in rural Goa - famous for its exotic beaches and idyllic rural countryside - has now exploded in violent agitations against corrupt local administrations.

DEVELOPMENT: Now for a Water Bankruptcy

Rarely a week goes by without a problem of water scarcity hitting the headlines. The acute droughts in Kenya, Argentina and the U.S. state of California are among the latest phenomena to illustrate that the global environment has been dangerously degraded. And participants in the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, heard that the planet could be destined towards "water bankruptcy".

Q&A: ‘Development Must Adapt to Water Resources We Have’

Environmental experts warn that one of the first effects of climate change will be scarcity of water, especially throughout the African continent. Already depleted water resources will become even more scarce.

Q&A: Water Pushed to the Limit

When it comes to water, "humanity does not have the full awareness of the danger it is facing and will only act under extreme circumstances. The bad news is that those extremes are drawing near," Manuel Baquedano, president of the Chilean non-governmental Institute of Political Ecology, told Tierramérica.

HEALTH-MALAWI: Rains Expose Poor Sanitation

Zimbabwe - where cholera has claimed more than 2,700 lives so far according to the Red Cross - is not the only southern African country facing increased disease as rains set in across the region. Malawi is also battling a cholera outbreak which has killed 19 people since the onset of the rainy season, an unusually high death toll.

DEVELOPMENT-AFRICA: New Nile Pact Stalled

Ten years of negotiations over a new protocol governing shared use of the Nile River are hanging in the balance, with Egypt and Sudan refusing to give up their present power over how much water is used by countries further upstream.

ENVIRONMENT-CAMBODIA: Opting For The Big Dam

It has been a long held plan of Cambodia’s government - a hydropower dam on the mainstream of the Mekong River in the central part of the country.