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Throughout history, through his need for civilization, man has created buildings that consume resources. The skyscraper is the epitome of this voracious consumption, its highly dense grouping of activities ie work, play, rest etc has become an ominous harbingers of our ecologically bleak future. As a reaction to the modern skyscrapers and its dilemmas the world’s eminent minds have created many variations of the skyscraper in the form of the antithetical subscrapers, groundscrapers and even depth scraper. Yet still they still struggle to achieve zero input/zero output in terms of resource production. There are greenscrappers which , though themselves are ecologically sound, are tied to and urban fabric and interconnection of production networks which are still contributing negatively towards the environment. The h O 2 + scraper proposes to break free of the urban fabric and functions as self-sufficient ambassadors in the sea. The h O 2 + scraper is an autonomous floatin...

“The Southwest is in the midst of a decade-long dry period. Lower-than-normal rainfall combined with higher-than-normal temperatures (likely due to  greenhouse warming ) has substantially altered the region’s hydrologic conditions. From 2000-2009, the Colorado River exhibited the lowest 10-year-running-average flow of any 10-year period in the last century. A team of researchers led by  Connie A. Woodhouse at the University of Arizona in Tucson examined paleo-climatic records to place this recent decade-long drought in a longer-term (1,200-year) context. Their findings, published in the  December 13 online edition of the  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , are more than sobering: they are a call to assess risks and prepare for the worst. Woodhouse and her colleagues found that as bad as the current drought is shaping up to be, it pales (so far) in comparison to one that lasted two decades during the middle of the 12th-century–and these dr...

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest desalinated water producer, plans to raise water prices for non-residential users. Higher prices will be applied to commercial buildings, industries, government, schools and hospitals, Riyadh based National Water Co chief executive officer Loay al Mussalam said on December 21 in response to e-mailed questions. He said Saudi regulators are discussing the timing and structure of the tariffs. Saudi Arabia wants raise prices to encourage water conservation. The kingdom needs $33.3bn in investments in desalination and water recycling plants to meet water demand, Riyadh based NCB Capital said in a report .

The fourth issue of the Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management - Q04/2010 has been released. Please feel free to download the Notes from here: http://swm-group.blogspot.com/p/downloads.html . If you encounter any problems accessing the Notes please request a free copy of the Notes from: swm.group@gmx.net . You are also invited to forward the download link to further interested stakeholders and/or inform others about the S ustainable | W ater | M anagement | G roup. CONTENT What can you expect from the fourth issue of the Notes? The layout of the Notes has been modified once more. The Notes now come with a navigation feature, facilitating the access to the various sections. The event calendar section has been amended with detailed conference announcements and a new text element - the Key Note - has been added to the Notes. Having the significant troubles associated with the most recent financial crisis in mind, this fourth issue is mainly dedicated to the economic aspect...

Water stress results from an imbalance between water use and water resources. The water stress indicator in this map measures the proportion of water withdrawal with respect to total renewable resources. It is a criticality ratio, which implies that water stress depends on the variability of resources. Water stress causes deterioration of fresh water resources in terms of quantity (aquifer over-exploitation, dry rivers, etc.) and quality (eutrophication, organic matter pollution, saline intrusion, etc.) The value of this criticality ratio that indicates high water stress is based on expert judgment and experience ( Alcamo and others, 1999 ). Read more...

Water stress is accelerating due to increasing demand for water from an ever growing Arab population, and climate change is compounding the problem. The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) set a target to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015. “The Arab Human Development report 2009, presents compelling evidence that the burgeoning water scarcity problem in the Arab region presents a serious threat to Human security. Under the umbrella of the League of Arab States (LAS) and in partnership with the Arab Ministerial Water Council (AMWC) and the Jordanian Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MWI), the Arab Countries Water Utilities Association (ACWUA) is organizing the first Arab Water Week.  The Arab Water Week (AWW) is the first regional meeting in the Arab region which will tackle water management issues through establishing innovative partnerships and platforms of collaborative work on water issue in the region.  The ...

NEW DELHI: The country’s attention may be focused on an ever-increasing energy needs, but water is a much bigger issue, says a key policymaker in the government. “Water crisis is a more serious issue than energy crisis,” said Montek Singh Ahluwalia , deputy chairman of Planning commission, at the World Economic Forum on Sunday. Speaking at a session on ‘How will India avert a Water Crisis?’ Mr Ahluwalia said that that the government was seized of the problem and was in the process of reviewing its water policy. He added that some of its key elements could be incorporated in the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17). The annual extraction of groundwater in India is by far the highest in the world and the unsustainable over-extraction has lowered the water table to dangerous levels, mid-term appraisal of the Eleventh five year plan had said. Multilateral agencies such as the World Bank have flagged ...