Clik here to view.
Grabbing at Solutions: Water for the Hungry First
Drip irrigation, shown here in Niger, can help save water, eventually reducing the pressure that drives water grabs. Photo: Bernard Pollack, Worldwatch Institute This piece is part of Water Grabbers:...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Grabbing the Colorado From the “People of the River”
Cucapá elder Inocencia-Gonzales speaks about the plight of her people near her town of El Mayor in the Colorado River Delta of northwestern Mexico. Photo credit: Blue Legacy/Oscar Durand This piece...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Groundbreaking Agreement to Save Australia’s Ailing Murray River
Dried-out wetlands along the Murray River, at Big Bend, courtesy of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. After years of debate, fiery protests and intense negotiations, Australia has adopted a historic...
View ArticleClik here to view.
We’re Heading Into the Rapids All Wrong
My experience running a rapid on the Payette River in Idaho offers a metaphor and lesson for our time. A kayaker on the Payette River in Idaho. Credit: Flickr/creative commons/Rick Hobson. Lately, as I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ethiopian Dam Threatens to Destroy Indigenous Livelihoods and the World’s...
Over the last century, the construction of big dams to generate power, supply water and control floods has unleashed a damaging cascade of social and environmental consequences – including the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Drought Fuels Water War Between Texas and New Mexico
Elephant Butte Dam on the Rio Grande in New Mexico. Photo by Sandra Postel As climate change alters rainfall patterns and river flows, tensions are bound to rise between states and countries that share...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Perils of Ignoring the Water-Energy Nexus
Photo credit: Michael Loke/Flickr Creative Commons As we pump gasoline into our automobiles, we watch the register ring up dollars, but we don’t see the water cost: some 13 gallons for every gallon of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
As Drought Persists in the West, Time to Prepare for Summer Shortages
River flows dependent on Colorado Rocky Mountain snowpack are diminished by dust on snow (shown here in 2009) as well as by winter drought. Credit: NASA Drought, drought, and more drought seems to be...
View ArticleClik here to view.
For World Water Day, Cooperation Brings More Benefit Per Drop
Rivers pay no mind to political boundaries. If unimpeded by dams and diversions, they flow naturally from mountain headwaters to the sea, crossing borders both within and between countries as if...
View ArticleRevival in the Colorado River Delta
So intimate was her connection to the river that as a girl she conditioned her hair with the soft mud from its channel bottom. Her family fished in the waters and hunted in the dense forests of...
View ArticleThe Accidental Wetland in the Colorado Delta
This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. Traveling south from the Mexican border town of San Luis Rio Colorado, we stop about 20 miles (32.2 km) from the Upper Gulf of California. It...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Landmark Cooperation Brings the Colorado River Home
In most years, little water makes it past Morelos Dam just south of the U.S.-Mexico border, which leaves the Colorado River and its delta dry. Photo by Cheryl Zook/National Geographic This post is part...
View ArticleColorado River, Meet the Sea
This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. Walking the mudflats of the Colorado River Delta in northwestern Mexico, my feet touch silt and sediment that originated in the U.S. Rocky...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Returning the Colorado River to the Sea
This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. Once teeming with life and spanning some two million acres, the delta of the Colorado River ranked among the planet’s greatest desert deltas....
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Water Bank Helps Revive Colorado Delta Willows and Wetlands
This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. In the delta community of Miguel Alemán, situated along the Colorado River corridor that forms the border between Mexico and Arizona, we...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bringing New Life to the Colorado Delta’s Fisheries
This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. The Colorado River sustains more than 30 million people and vast areas of farmland. But with no flow reaching the delta and the sea in most...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Locals Help Restore the Colorado Delta
This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. The Colorado River Delta once boasted a million acres of lush cattail marshes and riverside forests of cottonwoods and willows. But today,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
As Oil and Gas Drilling Competes for Water, One New Mexico County Says No
The Mora River upstream of Watrous in Mora County, New Mexico. In an effort to protect its water sources, Mora County has banned oil and gas extraction on county land. Photo: J. N. Stuart/Flickr/cc In...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Once a Smelly Nuisance, Mexicali’s Wastewater Now Brings Life to the Colorado...
This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. If there is one place that transforms wastewater from trouble-maker to life-saver it’s the site of Las Arenitas sewage treatment plant in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
South African Anti-Fracking Activist Calls for Global Alliance
Anti-fracking activist Jonathan Deal, winner of a 2013 Goldman Environmental Prize, discusses strategy to save the Karoo region of his native South Africa from gas drilling. Credit: Goldman...
View Article
