Variability, Risks and Competing Uses blog posts

Most people working in sustainable development are familiar with the ‘tragedy of the commons’ referring to when a group of individuals, all acting independently to deplete common resources, in this case degrading landscapes. But what if someone told you that the real tragedy  was that these land has to be either taken over by the state or privatized in order to be sustainable?

When it comes to discussions of water allocation in terms of development, needs for water like food security and energy grab the spotlight while water for nature is too often sidelined. With over-allocation, exploitation and conflict between human users, how does nature's voice fit in?

Publicly accessible satellite data gives water accounting a boost with the ultimate goal of being able to give water managers precise indications of where and when water is being “used” and allow them to plan accordingly.

Hovering over almost all of the discussions at Stockholm World Water Week was the question of climate change, and one of the few aspects of climate change we can be absolutely certain about is that things are going to become more variable. Claudia Ringler and Jeremy Bird join us on this episode of Thrive Podcast. 

Today we head to Northern Myanmar where filmmaker Douglas Varchol reports from the field. Varchol joins a research team from the project on "Working together for a better Kachin landscape.”

Managing transboundary river basins is a huge challenge. Even if there are no overt tensions between countries, local communities and national governments tend to act out of self-interest. 

The draft outcome document from the Third International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa rightly mentions that efforts to end hunger and malnutrition need to be scaled up and that ecosystems need to be protected for the benefit of all. Irrigation, however, is not mentioned at all.

A wide range of human activities leads to nitrogen and phosphorus emissions in water environments but agriculture is generally the main culprit. Anticipated agricultural intensification creates elevated concerns about the environmental consequences of agricultural nitrogen and phosphorus emissions in the future.

At the end of the Water in the Anthropocene conference in May the participants issued the Bonn Declaration on Global Water Security, which sets out in stark

While other countries often have mixed priorities for their water, Pakistan has always been clear. The Indus is for irrigation. Hydropower is a secondary concern. And yet, Pakistan could also use more energy, because almost one in four households (24%) has electricity for less than six hours a day...

The Sudd wetland of South Sudan is one of the largest tropical wetlands in the world. However, despite covering an area twice the size of Spain in the wet season, very little is known about the number of people it supports or the current state of its biodiversity.