Water

Recent king tides have again caused significant damage to coastal assets in Australia and New Zealand. While there are many coastal adaptation plans being developed, their implementation is lagging. Adaptation planning needs to consider more nuanced options that are likely to be more politically palatable and implementable.

A new study examines how the public perception of water scarcity affects Californians’ urban residential water consumption. Although awareness of drought does reduce water use, that effect largely disappears once the perception of crisis fades unless more prevalent policies and messaging kick in to counteract the fading memories.

Recurring dry spells across Kenya are destroying crops and pastures, starving animals and leaving millions of people at risk of food insecurity, say experts. To guarantee livestock fodder even when pastures are dry, farmers are switching to hydroponics, a soil-less culture technology which uses less water and land and can yield up to 10 times the crop grown in an open field.

As an input to the design of a Legal Instrument on Water Reuse in Europe, this report recommends minimum quality requirements for water reuse in agricultural irrigation and aquifer recharge based on a risk management approach.

The development of minimum

African cities need to better plan and invest in water infrastructure, global accounting firm Deloitte said on Tuesday, as Cape Town faces a severe drought. Officials predict taps in the South African city will run out of water on May 11, in a crisis that has brought to the fore the effects of climate change across the world.

Cape Town (South Africa) has been in drought since 2015 and other major urban areas with comparable population and climatic characteristic could face a similar crisis. Experts say lessons learned during Australia's millennium drought, may help avert a global crisis.

Annual rainfall in southern Africa has become more variable: droughts and floods are more frequent than before. As the region’s urban authorities, industries, farmers and other citizens works to adapt to these conditions, the experience of other countries may offer useful lessons.

This educational case study focuses on the 2015 earthquake in Nepal and consists of an online interactive learning module, a case document and an accompanying video.

About this case

On 25 April 2015, a 7.8M earthquake struck Nepal, affecting millions of