When Gretchen Whitmer campaigned for Michigan governor in 2018, she took aim at Michigan’s bottled water industry — and the state policy that gave it unfettered access to free water. Nestle was extracting hundreds of millions of gallons of groundwater a year, which it bottled and sold under the Ice Mountain brand. The only cost: a $200 yearly fee per site. The company asked the state for a 60%
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China gifted 3,000 metric tons of Tibet’s glacial water to the island nation of the Maldives in two separate batches in March and May — the same months it unveiled and implemented water conservation regulations at home.
The Water Conservation Regulations set limits on water usage within administrative regions and prioritizes water conversation work in Tibet and other parts of China.
They were issued by China’s State Council on March 20, a week before it sent the first delivery of 1,500 metric tons of water in jugs to the Maldives, which is experiencing a scarcity of fresh water.
The regulations then went into effect on May 1, weeks before China donated the second batch of water jugs.
China finalized the deal with the Maldives during a November 2023 visit by Yan Jinhai, chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region, to the low-lying archipelago threatened by rising sea levels.
The Maldives has forged strong bilateral relations with China and is a beneficiary of the Belt and Road Initiative, under which it has borrowed more than US$1 billion from Chinese banks in the past decade, according to Western think tanks.
Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu signed 20 agreements, including one for financial and military assistance, with Beijing during his inaugural state visit to China in January 2024.
The Maldives thanked the people of Tibet for their “generous donation,” which it expects will greatly support its island communities. Its freshwater resources are affected by erratic rainfall patterns and rising sea levels.
Water shortages in Tibet
But Tibetans inside Tibet said they face water shortages themselves because Chinese authorities have implemented systematic water conservation and management campaigns across various Tibetan villages and towns for over a decade.
This has occurred while authorities have restricted the availability of water and set limits on water usage at the local level.
“I have heard that China is donating bottled water from Tibet to other parts of the world for free for political gain,” said one source from the Tibet Autonomous Region, where Chinese authorities have carried out water conservation campaigns for over a decade.
“However, in Tibet, the local Tibetans do not have enough drinking water,” he said. “At times there isn’t enough water to even brush our teeth.”
On March 27, the same day the Maldives said it received the first batch of water, the Water Conservancy Bureau of Ngari Prefecture, or Ali in Chinese, the birthplace of key South Asian rivers, began a series of year-long events for the general public to promote water conservation.
In Nyingtri city, or Linzhi in Chinese, authorities have implemented the strictest water resources management system over the past several years and boast of its effectiveness.
“The water used to wash rice and vegetables can be used to mop the floor and water the flowers. … Nowadays, water-saving behaviors like this have become a conscious action of many citizens,” said a 2023 announcement by the city government.
Meanwhile, Tibetans who have grown up on their ancestral land in Gangkar township in Dingri county, called Tingri in Chinese, are being forced to relocate to make way for the expansion of China’s water bottling facilities and industry, two sources said.
“Gangkar is known for its fertile pastureland and significant water resources from glaciers with 15 water springs in the region, which the local Tibetans have always relied on for their livelihoods,” said the first source.
Chinese authorities plan to move about 430 residents to take control of the water resources from the land, he said.
Weaponizing water
China’s move signals it is engaging in “water politics” and playing the long game for geopolitical gains in South Asia, experts said.
The Chinese government has projects underway to extract clean, clear and mineral-rich water to support the expansion of its premium mineral bottled water industry, they said.
Beijing also wants to control water flows to lower riparian states such as India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, to further its own aspiration of regional dominance, experts said.
“The imperative to address the threat of China weaponizing water in Tibet cannot be overstated,” wrote scholars Neeraj Singh Manhas and Rahul Lad in a March report titled “China’s Weaponization of Water in Tibet A Lesson for the Lower Riparian States” in the Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs.
With approximately 87,000 dams built, China poses a historic threat, having already dammed most internal rivers, they add, while calling for proactive measures to implement enduring policies to protect these vital Tibet’s water resources.
Tibet is at the forefront of China’s “water wars” in the region, said Anushka Saxena, a research analyst at the Takshashila Institution, a public policy think tank in India.
Tibet’s eight major transboundary river systems have the capacity to turn China into “Asia’s water hegemon,” given that their water can be used for both domestic economic and foreign policy-related interests, as well as can be weaponized to cause harm to lower riparian states, she said.
“In that light, China’s moves vis-à-vis export of water to Maldives cannot be isolated from the larger approach China is adopting to using Tibet’s water resources,” she added.
Additional reporting by Dorjee Damdul for RFA Tibetan. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Lobsang, Tenzin Pema and Tenzin Dickyi for RFA Tibetan.
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Across Laos, a drop in the average amount of rainfall over the last five years is seriously affecting agricultural and electricity production, government officials told Radio Free Asia.
Farmers haven’t been able to plant rice or vegetables after a heat wave in April and May further hardened the ground and lowered water levels for rivers and streams down to just a trickle, several provincial officials said.
“We can do nothing,” a Department of Agriculture and Forestry official in southern Champassak province said. “We can’t plow. All we can do is wait. Wait for water or rainfall.”
This trend has been in place for several years – an ominous sign on World Environment Day, which is also Lao National Environment Day, which falls on Wednesday. Rivers and smaller streams have been too dry and the weather has been too hot to begin the rainy season planting.
Also, the rainfall shortage has left Laos’ dam reservoirs at just 30 percent water capacity, causing electricity production to drop 10 percent from last year, according to an official from the state-owned power company, Electricite du Laos.
“Every month, we have a meeting to discuss the water situation in the country – more specifically, about the amount of water we need and the amount of water that is available,” said a Lao Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, who like other sources in this report requested anonymity for safety reasons.
“However, until now, we haven’t found any solution to the shortage,” he said.
The deforestation challenge
Lao Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone said at a Cabinet meeting last month that his government is stepping up its monitoring of climate change and its impacts.
On Monday, he called on Laotians to stop cutting down trees, saying that illegal logging and deforestation have led to increased forest fires, degraded soil and flooding.
The prime minister restated the government’s goal of increasing nationwide forest coverage from 40% to 70%.
“Deforestation, land degradation, land clearance and forest fire have been intensifying in our country,” he said. “Together we can stop destroying forests to restore soil and fight against drought and floods.”
Because trees and soil can absorb carbon, forest restoration is believed to be an important way to counter climate change. But revitalized forests can also play a role in reducing heat and regulating rainfall patterns, according to the World Resources Institute.
The Lao government has issued several directives banning illegal logging and the illegal export of wood, including a strongly worded decree in 2015. But deforestation has continued, including by farmers who use slash-and-burn tactics to clear land to grow rice or cassava.
In practice, it’s very difficult for government officials to tell people that they can’t use nearby land to make a living, a Lao environmentalist said.
“Stopping deforestation is a big challenge,” he said. “Most Laotians are poor farmers who rely on the forest for survival.”
The data
More deforestation could mean a continuation of Laos’ declining rainfall rate. Before 2019, Laos usually received an average of 3,000 millimeters (118 inches) of rainfall a year, according to the World Bank.
But in 2019, only 1,460 millimeters (57 inches) fell. In 2020, it was 1,834 millimeters (72 inches), and in 2021 and 2022, there were 1,755 millimeters (69 inches) and 2,038 millimeters (80 inches) of rainfall, according to the World Bank
The trend continued into 2023 and the first five months of this year, according to the Champassak provincial official
“It’s rained only once in this area this year, “ he said. “If you look at rice fields right now, you’ll see only weeds, but no water.”
Translated by Max Avary. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Laos.
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Asunción Mita is a town of roughly 40,000 people in the hills of southeastern Guatemala, near the border with El Salvador. It’s dusty and hot in the dry season — located in the Central American dry corridor, which is particularly vulnerable to climate disasters. And it has become the center of a battle over the future of mining in Guatemala. In January, the outgoing Guatemalan government gave the…
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Late in the summer of 2022, the Environmental Protection Agency sent the Mississippi state government a routine report assessing its use of federal funding for water infrastructure. The agency concluded with the words “no findings” — that is, the EPA found no issue with how Mississippi was spending its money. The very next day, on August 29, as many as 180,000 residents in the Jackson area lost…
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In Mexico City, more and more residents are watching their taps go dry for hours a day. Even when water does flow, it often comes out dark brown and smells noxious. A former political leader is asking the public to “prioritize essential actions for survival” as the city’s key reservoirs run dry. Meanwhile, 2,000 miles south in the Colombian capital of Bogotá, reservoir levels are falling just as…
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Nearly 50 villages in western Myanmar are facing shortages of water, residents told RFA on Tuesday, after the hot season brought record high temperatures across the region.
Ponds and small lakes across Rakhine State are drying up, leaving residents with limited water for drinking and cooking. The United Nations has warned that tens of thousands of people displaced by conflict face the risk of disease as a result of the lack of water.
Villages across Ponnagyun township have faced severe drought since April, as the hot season reached its most intense period, said one resident, who declined to be identified in fear of reprisals. “There are two or three ponds in the village. But this year, the daytime temperature rose so high that the ponds went dry,” he said. “Some people don’t even bathe regularly and sometimes even lack drinking water. There are some aid groups donating water but it’s not enough because most of the villages need it.”
Ponnagyun faces a water shortage every year but this year has been the worst, he said, adding that some residents were suffering from diarrhea from drinking dirty water.
Nearly a quarter of the households in Ah Htet Myat Hle village’s camp for internally displaced people are facing a water shortage, a camp administrator said. Water-borne illnesses killed three people in the camp in April, with similar symptoms killing nearly 80 in other camps across the state in the same month, aid workers have said.
Camp official Aung Myint told RFA that hundreds of people were facing various symptoms from drinking unclean water.
“We are already having a lot of trouble in the camp. Hundreds of people are suffering from diarrhea. My child is also suffering from it, too,” he said. “Three people from the camp have died from disease. It is caused mainly due to unclean drinking water, rising heat and the toilets.”
Mass displacement and disruption in Rakhine State from fighting between junta forces and ethnic minority insurgents from the Arakan Army, has forced thousands of people from their homes and deprived them of their livelihoods. Those forced into camps, mostly members of the persecuted Rohingya minority, lack access to doctors and sanitation.
RFA tried to contact Rakhine State’s junta spokesperson, Hla Thein, but he did not respond.
Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.
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Soaring temperatures during the hot season in Cambodia has led to water shortages in prisons and is causing inmates’ health to suffer, family members and activists say.
Kak Komphea, a former leader of the now-banned opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party in Prey Sar Prison on incitement charges, is crammed in a 4-square-meter room with more than 10 other prisoners at, according to his wife, Prum Chantha.
He’s allowed only about 15 liters of unclean water per day – about a bucketful – for bathing, she said. “The prisoners are already living in difficult circumstances. This has tortured his body,” she said. “Even though it isn’t physical abuse, it is the same.”
Another arrested opposition party official – Toch Theung of the Candlelight Party – has been suffering from heat-related illness and was recently under medical treatment at Pursat Provincial Prison for more than a week, according to his wife, Hanh Sovanna.
Cambodia’s hot season lasts from February to April, when temperatures can rise to as high as 40 degrees Celsius (102 F).
The Ministry of Health issued an advisory on April 7 urging people to drink at least 2 liters of water a day – and avoid drinking alcohol and coffee, which can cause dehydration.
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The Ministry of Interior followed that up with instructions to prisons throughout the country to follow the Ministry of Health’s guidelines, according to Prison Department spokesman Nuth Savna. Each prison will strive to supply enough water during the hot weather, he told RFA Khmer.
Water shortages found
Human rights group Licadho said its investigators have found a lack of water at several prisons throughout the country, said Am Sam Ath.
If the government doesn’t address the shortage issue soon, the number of health problems among prisoners will rise, he said
Opposition activist and union leader Rong Chhun, who has been imprisoned several times, said the government lacks the will to address water shortages in prisons.
Interior Minister Sar Sokha acknowledged at a ministry meeting last October that the country’s prisons have become overcrowded. The total number of inmates has increased to more than 40,000 nationwide, he said.
Another well-known prisoner, Ny Nak, is also dealing with health problems related to hot conditions and overcrowding at Trapeang Phlong Prison in Tboung Khmum province, according to his wife, Sok Syneth.
In September, Ny Nak was badly beaten by about eight assailants on the streets of Phnom Penh just hours after he panned a Ministry of Agriculture report on rice prices.
He was arrested in January just after he posted a comment on Facebook that mocked a Ministry of Commerce statement about registering 10,000 new companies in 2024.
His wife, Sok Syneth, has asked court officials to transfer her husband to Prey Sar, where family members and lawyers can more easily monitor his health.
According to the law, when a person commits a crime, he or she should be imprisoned in the capital or province where crimes are committed, said Yi Soksan, a senior official at Adhoc, the country’s oldest human rights group.
Translated by Yun Samean. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Khmer.
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In the summer of 2022, heavy rainfall damaged a water treatment plant in the city of Jackson, Mississippi, precipitating a high-profile public health crisis. The Republican Governor Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency, as thousands of residents were told to boil their water before drinking it. For some, the pressure in their taps was so low that they couldn’t flush their toilets and were…
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In the summer of 2022, heavy rainfall damaged a water treatment plant in the city of Jackson, Mississippi, precipitating a high-profile public health crisis. The Republican Governor Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency, as thousands of residents were told to boil their water before drinking it. For some, the pressure in their taps was so low that they couldn’t flush their toilets and were…
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Ten years after government mistakes and cost-cutting measures caused a drinking water disaster that afflicted daily life in Flint, Michigan, and exposed thousands of schoolchildren to harmful levels of lead, residents are still waiting for a resolution as environmentalists warn that the U.S. faces a spiraling water safety and affordability crisis. In March, a federal judge held city and state…
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In the summer of 2022, heavy rainfall damaged a water treatment plant in the city of Jackson, Mississippi, precipitating a high-profile public health crisis. The Republican Governor Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency, as thousands of residents were told to boil their water before drinking it. For some, the pressure in their taps was so low that they couldn’t flush their toilets and were forced to rely on bottled water for weeks.
Many of the city’s 150,000 residents were wary that their local government could get clean water running through their pipes again. State officials had a history of undermining efforts to repair Jackson’s beleaguered infrastructure, and the city council, for its part, didn’t have the money to make the fixes on its own. So when the federal government stepped in that fall, allocating funding and appointing an engineer to manage the city’s water system, there was reason to believe change may finally be near.
But as the months wore on, hope turned to frustration. The federally appointed engineer, Ted Henifin, began taking steps to run the city’s water system through a private company, despite Mayor Chokwe Lumumba’s objections. Advocates’ repeated requests for data and other information about Jackson’s drinking water went unanswered, according to a local activist, Makani Themba, and despite Henifin’s assurances before a federal judge that the water was safe to drink, brown liquid still poured out of some taps. Faced with these conditions, a group of advocates sent the Environmental Protection Agency a letter last July asking to be involved in the overhaul of the city’s water system.
“Jackson residents have weathered many storms, literally and figuratively, over the last several years,” they wrote in the letter. “We have a right and responsibility to be fully engaged in the redevelopment of our water and sewer system.” The letter was followed by an emergency petition to the EPA containing similar requests for transparency and involvement.
Earlier this month, a federal judge granted the advocates their request, making two community organizations, the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign and the People’s Advocacy Group, parties to an EPA lawsuit against the city of Jackson for violating the Safe Drinking Water Act. A seat at the table of the legal proceedings, the advocates hope, will allow the city’s residents to have a say in rebuilding their infrastructure and also ward off privatization. The saga in Jackson reflects a wider problem affecting public utilities across the country, with cash-strapped local governments turning to corporations to make badly needed repairs to water treatment plants, distribution pipes, and storage systems, a course that often limits transparency and boxes locals out of the decision-making.
“This isn’t a uniquely Jackson problem,” said Brooke Floyd, co-director of the Jackson People’s Assembly at the People’s Advocacy Institute. “We need ways for all these cities that need infrastructure repairs to get clean water to their communities.”
The roots of Jackson’s water crisis lie in decades of disinvestment and neglect. Like many other mid-sized cities around the country, such as Pittsburgh and St. Louis, Jackson declined after white, middle-class residents relocated to the suburbs, taking tax dollars away from infrastructure in increasing need of repair. Between 1980 and 2020, Jackson’s population dropped by around 25 percent. Today, the city is more than 80 percent Black, up from 50 percent in the 1980s. A quarter of Jackson’s residents live below the poverty line, with most households earning less than $40,000 a year, compared with $49,000 for the state overall.
Over the decades, antagonism between the Republican state government and the Democratic and Black-led local government created additional obstacles to updating Jackson’s water and sewage infrastructure. A Title VI civil rights complaint that the NAACP filed with the EPA in September 2022 accused Governor Reeves and the state legislature of “systematically depriving Jackson the funds that it needs to operate and maintain its water facilities in a safe and reliable manner.” The biggest problem, the NAACP argued, was that the state had rejected the city’s proposal for a one percent sales tax to pay for infrastructure updates and by directing funds from the EPA’s Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Fund away from the capital city.
“Despite Jackson’s status as the most populous city in Mississippi, State agencies awarded federal funds” from the EPA program three times in the past 25 years, the complaint read. “Meanwhile, the State has funneled funds to majority-white areas in Mississippi despite their less acute needs.”
In the absence of adequate resources from the state and local government, Jacksonians have learned to fend for themselves, Floyd told Grist. At the height of the water crisis in 2022, federal dollars helped fund the distribution of bottled water to thousands of residents, but when the money dried up, people organized to secure drinking water for households still reckoning with smelly, off-color fluid running from their taps. When Henifin began posting boil-water notices on a smartphone application that some found hard to use, one resident set up a separate community text service. Floyd said that for some residents, these problems are still ongoing today.
“There’s this sense of, we have to provide for each other because no one is coming,” Floyd said. “We know that the state is not going to help us.”
Henifin has told a federal judge that he’s made a number of moves to improve Jackson’s water quality. The private company that he set up, JXN Water, has hired contractors to update the main water plant’s corrosion control and conducted testing for lead and bacteria like E. Coli. But residents and advocates point out that while the water coming out of the system might be clean, the city hosts more than 150 miles of decrepit pipes that can leach toxic chemicals into the water supply. Advocates want the city to replace them and conduct testing in neighborhoods instead of just near the treatment facility, changes that the city has federal money to make. In December 2022, the federal government allocated $600 million to Jackson for repairs to its water system.
But the worry is that this money will be spent on other things. Henifin is the one who handles the federal funds. By court order, he has the authority to enter into contracts, make payments, and change the rates and fees charged to consumers.
Themba, the local activist, said that Henifin has not responded to residents’ demands for additional testing and access to monitoring data that already exists. Because JXN Water is a private company, it’s not subject to public disclosure laws requiring this information to be shared with the public. (Henifin did not respond to Grist’s requests for comment.)
Themba points to Pittsburgh as an example of a place where residents fought privatization of their water system and secured a more democratic public utility. In 2012, faced with a lack of state and federal funding, the city turned over its water system to Veolia, an international waste and water management giant based in France. Over the following years, the publicly traded company elected for cost-cutting measures that caused lead to enter the water supply of tens of thousands of residents. A local campaign ensued, and advocates eventually won a commitment from the city government to return the water system to city controlCK? and give the public a voice in the system’s management.
“What we’ve learned from all over the country is that privatization doesn’t work for the community,” Themba said. “We want what works.”
The court order that designated Henifin as Jackson’s water manager in 2022 does not outline what will happen once his four-year contract expires in 2026. Last month, the Mississippi Senate passed a bill that would put Jackson’s water in the hands of the state after Henifin steps down, a move that the manager recently said he supports and that Jackson’s city mayor strongly opposes. That bill soon failed in the House without a vote. Now that they are part of the lawsuit, advocates hope they’ll have a chance to influence the outcome, before it’s too late.
“Jackson residents have felt left out of the equation for so long,” Floyd said. “If we lose this, that’s a big deal.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A water crisis in Mississippi turns into a fight against privatization on Apr 26, 2024.
This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lylla Younes.
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Missile attacks on two universities in a holiday town in Myanmar killed three and injured eight, residents told Radio Free Asia on Monday.
During coup leader Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing’s Thingyn – or water festival – visit to Mandalay division’s Pyinoolwin city on Sunday, an unknown group fired more than 15 missiles at two military universities. The blasts, which hit the Defense Services Academy and Defense Services Technology Academy, also damaged a department of a nearby hospital and Aung Myay Zaya monastery.
The missiles injured five civilians when they landed on Pyinoolwin Hospital’s orthopedics department, said one Pyinoolwin resident, declining to be named for security reasons.
“The two monks who died were people who wore robes during the Thingyn period. They died when the explosion happened near them,” he said, describing civilians who temporarily become monks to observe Myanmar’s new year water festival. “The last man who died on the spot was in Ward No. 8. Another three people were injured in this neighborhood alone.”
Following the attack, tourists who came for the holiday and some permanent residents fled the city, he added.
From 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Sunday evening, about 40 shots and explosions could be heard, said one Pyinoolwin resident who was near the site of the attack.
“After the sound of the missiles, Defense Services Academy and Defense Services Technology Academy troops cut the power. The military and social aid vehicles were busy,” he said, declining to be named for fear of reprisals. “I knew they fell in the area of the Defense Services Academy.”
Staff at Pyinoolwin Hospital are preparing to move patients to Mandalay Hospital, while junta soldiers are conducting security checks around the city, residents said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks yet, but residents told RFA that they were likely carried out from a hill behind the university campuses.
The junta has not issued any statements about the attacks. RFA called Mandalay division’s junta spokesperson Thein Htay for more information on the attacks, but he did not respond.
Residents told RFA they believe the attack was carried out because of Min Aung Hlaing’s visit. On Sunday, a bomb exploded near a pavilion in Mandalay city, injuring 12 people.
Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.
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Facing drought and saltwater intrusions in southern Vietnam, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh called on authorities to ensure people have sufficient drinking water, a government dispatch said Monday.
Through mid-May, the Mekong Delta region could experience three waves of saltwater intrusion – when ocean water seeps into sources of freshwater – and so far in 2024, the problem has been much worse than normal, the dispatch said.
The government’s communique came after TV footage showed residents of an apartment complex in Thu Duc, a subcity of Ho Chi Minh City, lined up around the block on April 3, buckets in hand, to get water from a truck.
The facilities’ 4,000 residents had received a notice that their water would be turned off for maintenance, but experts told Radio Free Asia that water supply issues like these could be caused by a drought in the region and saltwater intrusion.
Experts acknowledged the problem, but were not alarmed, saying that there would be very little effect on agriculture, and issues with water supply to homes would not be too serious.
The management board for the Ehome Phu Huu Residential Complex said on April 4 that water had been restored to the apartment building. RFA Vietnamese contacted the board on April 5, and the person who answered the phone confirmed that water was running but was not able to answer questions about why the water had been shut off.
The Thu Duc Water Supply Company, which provides water to many areas of the city, had announced several suspensions of service on its website, saying that shutting off the water was to “maintain or construct water pipelines” or to “coordinate with the construction of other projects.”
Calls by RFA to the company went unanswered.
Water cuts have been a recurring problem in the city, a resident who wished to remain anonymous due to security reasons, told RFA.
“The situation has been worsening recently. Water cuts often start at 5:30 a.m., and sometimes by 11:00 p.m. we haven’t seen the water back or have only a few drops,” he said. “Having water cuts is terrible. We don’t even have water to wash our hands, not to mention other things.”
Saltwater intrusion
The recurring water cuts are likely the result of saltwater intrusion, Ho Long Phi, the former Director of the Center for Water Management and Climate Change at the National University in Ho Chi Minh City, told RFA.
“According to my assessment, saltwater is intruding further and further inland, affecting water supply plants and, therefore, shortening water supply times,” he said, adding that the effect is most pronounced in the Mekong River Delta in the country’s south, and the Dong Nai River are which flows through Ho Chi Minh City.
He said the problem is not serious enough to bring about water shortages yet, but it does affect the capacity of water supply plants.
The shortage may also be because the drought has dried out some of the places where water is pumped out of the ground, Le Anh Tuan, the Deputy Director of the Climate Change Institute at Can Tho University, told RFA. Can Tho is the largest city in the Mekong Delta region in Vietnam.
He said that because these places are drying out, supply plants in Ho Chi Minh City and other places must transport water from elsewhere, which cuts into that location’s supplies.
Additionally coastal areas have to get water from elsewhere as theirs has become too salty, he said, adding that in some cases, the water coming from the tap is salty.
Tuan said that the current drought was not as serious as the one in 2016.
He said that people in the region will have to endure shortages for the next four to six weeks until the rainy season begins.
“Agricultural activities have almost finished, therefore, the damage to agriculture is not significant,” he said. “What concerns me the most is the damage to water supply infrastructure.”
“Consequently, residents (in these rural areas) rely on on-site groundwater, which is neither cost-effective nor environmentally sustainable.”
Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese Service.
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Diego Rivera (Mexico), El Agua, Origen de la Vida (‘Water, Origin of Life’), 1951.
By November 2023, it was already clear that the Israeli government had begun to deny Palestinians in Gaza access to water. ‘Every hour that passes with Israel preventing the provision of safe drinking water in the Gaza strip, in brazen breach of international law, puts Gazans at risk of dying of thirst and diseases related to the lack of safe drinking water’, said Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, UN special rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation. ‘Israel’, he noted, ‘must stop using water as a weapon of war’. Before Israel’s most recent attack on Gaza, 97 percent of the water in Gaza’s only coastal aquifer was already unsafe for human consumption based on World Health Organisation standards. Over the course of its many attacks, Israel has all but destroyed Gaza’s water purification system and prevented the entry of materials and chemicals needed for repair.
In early October 2023, Israeli officials indicated that they would use their control over Gaza’s water systems as a means to perpetrate a genocide. As Israeli Major General Ghassan Alian, the head of the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), said on 10 October, ‘Human beasts are dealt with accordingly. Israel has imposed a total blockade on Gaza. No electricity, no water, just damage. You wanted hell, you will get hell’. On 19 March, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Palestine Jamie McGoldrick noted that Gaza needed ‘spare parts for water and sanitation systems’ as well as ‘chemicals to treat water’, since the ‘lack of these critical items is one of the key drivers of the malnutrition crisis’. ‘Malnutrition crisis’ is one way to talk about a famine.
Faeq Hassan (Iraq), The Water Carriers, 1957.
The assault on Gaza – whose entire population is ‘currently facing high levels of acute food insecurity’, according to Oxfam and the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification – has sharpened the contradictions that strike the world’s people with force. A UN report released on World Water Day (22 March) shows that, as of 2022, 2.2 billion people have no access to safely managed drinking water, that four out of five people in rural areas lack basic drinking water, and that 3.5 billion people do not have sanitation systems. As a consequence, every day, over a thousand children under the age of five die from diseases linked to inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene. These children are among the 1.4 million people who die every year due to these deficiencies. The UN report notes that, since women and girls are the primary collectors of water, they spend more of their time finding water when water systems deteriorate due to inadequate or non-existent infrastructure or droughts exacerbated by climate change. This has resulted in higher dropout rates for girls in school.
Newsha Tavakolian (Iran), Untitled, 2010–2011.
A 2023 study by UN Women describes the perils of the water crisis for women and girls:
Inequalities in access to safe drinking water and sanitation do not affect everyone equally. The greater need for privacy during menstruation, for example, means women and girls and other people who menstruate may access shared sanitation facilities less frequently than people who do not, which increases the likelihood of urinary and reproductive tract infections. Where safe and secure facilities are not available, choices to use facilities are often limited to dawn and dusk, which exposes at-risk groups to violence.
The lack of access to public toilets is by itself a serious danger to women in cities across the world, such as Dhaka, Bangladesh, where there is one public toilet for every 200,000 people.
Aboudia (Côte d’Ivoire), Les trois amis II (‘The Three Friends II’), 2018.
Access to drinking water is being further constricted by the climate catastrophe. For instance, a warming ocean means glacier melt, which lifts the sea levels and allows salt water to contaminate underground aquifers more easily. Meanwhile, with less snowfall, there is less water in reservoirs, which means less water to drink and use for agriculture. Already, as the UN Water report shows, we are seeing increased droughts that now impact at least 1.4 billion people directly.
According to the United Nations, half of the world’s population experiences severe water scarcity for at least part of the year, while one quarter faces ‘extremely high’ levels of water stress. ‘Climate change is projected to increase the frequency and severity of these phenomena, with acute risks for social stability’, the UN notes. The issue of social stability is key, since droughts have been forcing tens of millions of people into flight and starvation.
Ibrahim Hussein (Malaysia), The Game, 1964.
Climate change is certainly a major driver of the water crisis, but so is the rules-based international order. Capitalist governments must not be allowed to point to an ahistorical notion of climate change as an excuse to shirk their responsibility in creating the water crisis. For instance, over the past several decades, governments across the world have neglected to upgrade wastewater treatment facilities. Consequently, 42% of household wastewater is not treated properly, which damages ecosystems and aquifers. Even more damning is the fact that only 11% of domestic and industrial wastewater is being reused.
Increased investment in wastewater treatment would reduce the amount of pollution that enters water sources and allow for better harnessing of the freshwater available to us on the planet. There are several sensible policies that could be adopted to immediately address the water crisis, such as those proposed by UN Water to protect coastal mangroves and wetlands; harvest rainwater; reuse wastewater; and protect groundwater. But these are precisely the kinds of policies that are opposed by capitalist firms, whose profit line is improved by the destruction of nature.
In March 2018, we launched our second dossier, Cities Without Water. It is worthwhile to reflect on what we showed then, six years ago:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Technical Paper VI (IPCC, June 2008) is on climate change and water. The scientific consensus in this document is that the changes in weather patterns – induced by carbon-intensive capitalism – have a negative effect on the water cycle. Areas where there will be higher rainfall might not see more groundwater due to the velocity of the rain, which will create a rapid movement of water to the oceans. Such high velocity rainfall neither refills aquifers (natural water sources), nor does it allow water to be stored by humans. The scientists also predict higher rates of drought in regions such as the Mediterranean and Southern Africa. It is this technical report that put forward the number that over a billion people will suffer from water scarcity.
For the past decade, the United Nations Environmental Programme has warned about the growth of water-intensive lifestyles and of water pollution. Both of these – lifestyles and pollution – are consequences of the spread of capitalist social relations and capitalist productive mechanisms across the planet. In terms of lifestyle use, the average resident in the United States consumes between 300 and 600 litres of water per day. This is a misleading figure. It does not mean that individuals consume such high amounts of water. Much of this water is used by water-intensive agriculture and by water-intensive industrial production, including energy production. The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends per person usage of 20 litres of water per day for basic hygiene and food preparation. The gap between the two is not accidental. It is about a water-intensive lifestyle – use of washing machines and dishwashers, washing of cars and watering of gardens, as well as the use of water by factories and factory farms.
Water pollution is a serious problem. In Esquel, Argentina, the people saw that the contaminants from corporate gold mining were ruining their drinking water. ‘Water is worth more than gold’ (El agua vale más que el oro), they said. Ruthless techniques of extraction by mining corporations (by use of cyanide) and of cultivation by agribusiness (by use of fertilisers and pesticides) have ruined reservoirs of clean water. Their blue gold, say the people of Esquel, is more important than real gold. They held a public assembly in 2003 that asserted their right to their water against the interests of the private corporations.
It is worth pointing out that the amount of water it would take to support 4.7 billion people at the WHO daily minimum would be 9.5 billion litres – the exact amount used every day to water the world’s golf courses. The water used by 60,000 villages in Thailand, for instance, is used to water one golf course in Thailand. These are the priorities of our current system.
In other words, watering golf courses is more important than providing piped water to the thousand children under the age of five who die every day due to water deprivation. Those are the values of the capitalist system.
The post Thousands Have Lived without Love, but Not One without Water first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Jackson, Mississippi, residents will now have a formal seat in negotiations that could determine the future of clean water access. The change comes from a “motion to intervene” in the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) case against the city of Jackson. Filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign and the People’s Advocacy Institute…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
CO2 is bursting into the atmosphere like never before, up and away, like it has wings.
According to climate scientists, we’re fast approaching white-knuckle time. This reinforces the outlook for 2024 as expressed by WMO: “Every major global climate record was broken last year and 2024 could be worse.” (Celeste Saulo, secretary-general, World Meteorological Organization)
Making matters more nerve-wracking yet, Carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere is setting new all-time records, soaring above expectations and well above previous readings at Mauna Lua Observatory, Hawaii:
March 18, 2024, CO2 measured 426.02 ppm.
March 15, 2023. CO2 measured 420.24 ppm.
That’s +5.78 ppm in only one year. An increase of this magnitude has not been seen before. On a seasonal basis, the month of May is ordinarily the peak reading for the year. That’s still weeks away. The climate system as it relates to greenhouse gas emissions appears to have gone bonkers, out in left field.
The historical annual rate of CO2:
1960s +0.8 ppm
1980s +1.6 ppm
2000s +2.0 ppm
2010s +2.4 ppm
Today’s +5.78 ppm is way above the trend.
Current daily readings:
March 15 427.93
March 16 426.36
March 17 423.96
March 18 426.02
It should be noted that the month of February 2024 @ 424.55 ppm was +4.25 ppm versus February 2023 @ 420.30 ppm. Once again, way above past increases. According to CO2-Earth: “The measured CO2 levels in the atmosphere serve as the single best, real-time signal of whether the world as a whole is on track to a safe future.”
Ergo, a safe future appears to be dangling.
CO2 levels may be signaling serious trouble of unanticipated global warming bursting loose, depending upon how much more CO2 is generated by fossil fuels from industry, cars, planes, and trains as well as how the planet’s climate system continues to adjust and react to decades of harsh pounding by Homo sapiens. Nature is under attack in sensitive areas, like rainforests, permafrost (25% of the Northern Hemisphere), boreal forests, Antarctica, Greenland, the Arctic, and oceans with emissions causing too much heat to handle. And today’s CO2 says it’s getting worse.
What will the world’s leaders do in the face of a trembling global climate system?
Maybe hold another UN climate conference, like COP28 in Dubai last year, headlined by another fossil fuel nation/state with a Middle East oil and gas executive as president of the UN Conference of the Parties (COP) to figure out how to handle massive excessive fossil fuel CO2 emissions choking the planet. That would really rub it into the noses of climate scientists who’d probably refuse to attend one of the second biggest shams in human history, following in the footsteps of COP28. Frankly, that kind of kindergarten approach to handling a serious issue like climate change should motivate people across the planet to rise up in opposition to one more “big fix” designed to continue enriching a teeny-weeny miniscule segment of world population.
Only recently in January 2024 Mauna Lau Observatory Hawaii anticipated a “relatively large” surge in annual average CO2 concentrations for 2024, estimating an increase of approximately 2.84 ppm more than 2023. But current trends put that into question as too low.
Global warming feeds off increasing levels of greenhouse gases, like methane, nitrous oxide, water vapor but mostly carbon dioxide (CO2). Along those lines, there are 10 primary greenhouse gases, and it’s scientifically proven that CO2 accounts for about 76% of greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gases are labeled as such because of the greenhouse effect trapping solar radiation, which functions like any typical greenhouse but without glass to trap heat. Molecules, such as CO2, simulate glass and thus retain heat.
The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the more heat is trapped. This equation is very straight-forward. But what if CO2 increases rapidly well beyond its historic pattern, which is already well beyond any historical trend in modern history? That’s happening and climate scientists in the know are deeply concerned.
As a consequence, since it’s a national election year, according to an Arctic News article d/d March 16, 2024: “The accelerating growth in carbon dioxide indicates that politicians have failed and are failing to take adequate action.”
In other words, politicians are failing to fight human-generated global warming. Many of the big promises by nations of the world at Paris ’15 to decrease emissions are nearly kaput. Politicians of the world have failed the planet and should be fired because once greenhouse gas emissions push global warming towards, and eventually to, warp speed, meaning runaway global warming, like what now appears to be in early stages, then it’s too late to remove them from office and do something constructive with replacement politicians that understand science, like Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D – RI), famous for his Time to Wake Up speeches to the Senate.
Already, before this current spike up in CO2, professional sources were anticipating trouble ahead. According to a very respected 2024 forecast, Professor Richard Betts, the Met Office in Britain:
This year’s estimated rise in atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration is well above all three 1.5°C-compatible scenarios highlighted in the IPCC report… Even when we compensate for the temporary effects of El Niño, we find that human-induced emissions would still cause the CO2 rise in 2024 to be on the absolute limits of compliance with the 1.5°C pathways. (Eric Ralls, “Met Office: 2024 CO2 Levels Will Surpass the Point of No Return”, Earth.com, January 22, 2024.)
Meanwhile, Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) service confirmed that February 2023 to January 2024 saw warming of 1.52 degrees Celsius above the 19th century benchmark. (“World Sees First 12 Months Above 1.5C Warming Level: Climate Monitor”, PHYS.ORG, February 8, 2024.)
As it happens, the world climate system is turning into a Hollywood blockbuster horror film with CO2, the villain of the movie set, now spiking up as drought clobbers what is usually the wettest (northern) part of the Amazon and wildfires rip across Canada from the West Coast to the Atlantic provinces and ravage parts of Siberia. But it’s even worse than that as Zombie Fires, meaning fires that continue burning below surface during winter months, continue smoldering in British Columbia and Alberta into winter months. (“Canada Wildfires Never Stopped, They Just Went Underground as Zombie Fires Smolder on Through the Winter“, CBS News, February 23, 2024.)
“A lot of people talk about fire season and the end of the fire season,’ referring to the period generally thought of as being from May to September, ‘but the fires did not stop burning in 2023. The fires dug underground and have been burning pretty much all winter.” (Ibid.)
Global warming set the stage for those wildfires and set the stage for the most vicious drought in Amazon rainforest history. NASA’s GRACE satellite system shows an Amazon in tenuous condition in an unprecedented state of breakdown. GRACE has detected large areas of the Amazon classified as “Deep Red Zones” with severely constrained water levels. That’s global warming hard at work.
As for one example of many, back in October 2023: “The level of the Rio Negro is dropping by 1 meter (3 feet) every three days, something that has never been recorded before.” (“Amazon Drought Cuts River Traffic, Leaves Communities Without Water and Supplies“, Mongabay, October 2023.).
It’s almost impossible to grasp the damage happening to world ecosystems because it happens on the fringe of civil society, such as Siberian and Alaskan permafrost leaking methane, Antarctica ice shelves deteriorating, Greenland rain at its summit for the first time ever as the entire ice structure goes off the charts with a summertime melt rate increasing from 30,000,000 tons per day to 720,000,000 tons per day in the time span of only one year. Honestly, this is beyond words!
However, people are now starting to see the damage first-hand, like major European rivers (Rhine, Danube, etc.) partially drying up with commercial barges stuck in mud in the summer of ’22 as hundreds of French/Italian communities survived the summer of ‘22 on emergency truck-delivered water, speaking of which Johannesburg (pop. 5.6M) made CBS News headlines March 21, 2024: South Africa Water Crisis Sees Taps Run Dry across Johannesburg. And France imported electrical power for the first time in 40 years as low river flow inhibited nuclear power generation, normally 70% of France’s electrical energy. That hits home.
A few years ago, not that far back in time, people would have freaked out over the threats currently wrought by global warming, but as time passes, people get accustomed to hearing about disaster scenarios like a Hollywood film but on TV in the comfort of their homes, and they shrug and move on with life as long as it’s not in their neighborhood.
Elsewhere, beyond the weird noises of nature heard in the Amazon rainforest, in everyday life people wake up every morning in cities like LA and NYC and Atlanta and Dallas, London, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro (record heat 62.3°C or 144.14°F on March 18), and they go about daily routines, the same ole, same ole, hop into a new EV, motor the freeway to an underground parking garage, up an elevator 20 floors to air-conditioned offices for 8 hours and then reverse the process. These people do not live where climate change damages ecosystems.
Urban ecosystems mainly consist of concrete, asphalt, glass, steel, some wood, chemical-laden textiles, and a sprinkling of flora. What’s to harm? Urban residents are missing, and ignorant of, the deterioration of the planet’s most important ecosystems that sustain life, period! This is called “recognition deficit” and down the road the consequences will be deadly.
The recognition deficit of the dangers of global warming glosses over reality. Life seems the same in NYC today as yesterday but ecosystems that are distant, out of sight, are on the ropes and some near collapse. A very harsh impact is lurking in the background. One day it’ll be profound and too late recognized.
What to do? This is the year of political electioneering. Don’t endorse political candidates that don’t understand and support climate science. This is something that everybody can do with impact, and it could be powerful.
Get off the couch and go door-to-door, or email, or pick up the phone to call friends to support candidates who believe in climate science. You can help prevent Hot House Earth, hopefully.
The post CO2 Bursting into the Atmosphere first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Incarcerated people often must drink unhealthy water, a particularly cruel – but not unusual – form of punishment
Russell Rowe spent almost two and a half years in Washington DC’s central detention facility, where rusty water flowed from taps in sinks that were connected to toilets. He remembers dawdling at the nurse’s station when it was time to take his meds, in hopes she’d give him an extra, tiny “portion” cup of water, the cup that often holds or accompanies pills.
“I was just in a state of constant dehydration,” he said. “My whole body felt different. I just didn’t feel well.”
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
The starvation regime continues unabated as Israel continues its campaign in the Gaza Strip. One of the six provisional measures ordered by the International Court Justice entailed taking “immediate and effective measures” to protect the Palestinian populace in the Gaza Strip from risk of genocide by ensuring the supply of humanitarian assistance and basic services.
In its case against Israel, South Africa argued, citing various grounds, that Israel’s purposeful denial of humanitarian aid to Palestinians could fall within the UN Genocide Convention as “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
A month has elapsed since the ICJ order, after which Israel was meant to report back on compliance. But, as Amnesty International reports, Israel continues “to disregard its obligation as the occupying power to ensure the basic needs of Palestinians in Gaza are met.”
The organisation’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, Heba Morayef, gives a lashing summary of that conduct. “Not only has Israel created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, but it is also displaying callous indifference to the fate of Gaza’s population by creating conditions which the ICJ has said placed them at imminent risk of genocide.” Israel, Morayef continues to state, had “woefully failed to provide for Gazans’ basic needs” and had “been blocking and impeding the passage of sufficient aid into the Gaza strip, in particular to the north which is virtually inaccessible, in a clear show of contempt for the ICJ ruling and in flagrant violation of its obligation to prevent genocide.”
The humanitarian accounting on this score is grim. Since the ICJ order, the number of aid trucks entering Gaza has precipitously declined. Within three weeks, it had fallen by a third: an average of 146 a day were coming in three weeks prior; afterwards, the numbers had fallen to about 105. Prior to the October 7 assault by Hamas, approximately 500 trucks were entering the strip on a daily basis.
The criminally paltry aid to the besieged Palestinians is even too much for some Israeli protest groups which have formed with one single issue in mind: preventing any aid from being sent into Gaza. As a result, closures have taken place at Kerem Shalom due to protests and clashes with security forces.
Their support base may seem to be small and peppered by affiliates from the Israeli Religious Zionism party of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, but an Israeli Democracy Institute poll conducted in February found that 68% of Jewish respondents opposed the transfer of humanitarian aid to the residents of Gaza. Rachel Touitou of Tzav 9, a group formed in December with that express purpose in mind, stated her reasoning as such: “You cannot expect the country to fight its enemy and feed it at the same time.”
Hardly subtle, but usefully illustrative of the attitude best reflected by the blood curdling words of Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, who declared during the campaign that his country’s armed forces were “fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly” in depriving them of electricity, food and fuel.
In December 2023, the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding, among other things, that the warring parties “allow and facilitate the use of all available routes to and throughout the entire Gaza Strip, including border crossings”. Direct routes were also to be prioritised. To date, Israel has refused to permit aid through other crossings.
In February, the Global Nutrition Cluster reported that “the nutrition situation of women and children in Gaza is worsening everywhere, but especially in Northern Gaza where 1 in 6 children are acutely malnourished and an estimated 3% face the most severe form of wasting and require immediate treatment.”
The organisation’s report makes ugly reading. Over 90% of children between 6 to 23 months along with pregnant and breastfeeding women face “severe food poverty”, with the food supplied being “of the lowest nutritional value and from two or fewer food groups.” At least 90% of children under the age of 5 are burdened with one or more infectious diseases, while 70% have suffered from diarrhoea over the previous two weeks. Safe and clean water, already a problem during the 16-year blockade, is now in even shorter supply, with 81% of households having access to less than one litre per person per day.
Reduced to such conditions of monumental and raw desperation, hellish scenes of Palestinians swarming around aid convoys were bound to manifest. On February 29, Gaza City witnessed one such instance, along with a lethal response from Israeli troops. In the ensuing violence, some 112 people were killed, adding to a Palestinian death toll that has already passed 30,000. While admitting to opening fire on the crowd, the IDF did not miss a chance to paint their victims as disorderly savages, with “dozens” being “killed and injured from pushing, trampling and being run over by the trucks.” The acting director of Al-Awda Hospital, Dr. Mohammed Salha, in noting the admission of some 161 wounded patients, suggested that gun fire had played its relevant role, given that most of those admitted suffered from gunshot wounds.
If Israel’s intention had been to demonstrate some good will in averting any insinuation that genocide was taking place, let alone a systematic policy of collective punishment against the Palestinian population, little evidence of it has been shown. If anything, the suspicions voiced by South Africa and other critics aghast at the sheer ferocity of the campaign are starting to seem utter plausible in their horror.
The post Conscious and Unconscionable: The Starving of Gaza first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
We live in a world of dangerous, deadly extremes. Record-breaking heat waves, intense drought, stronger hurricanes, unprecedented flash flooding. No corner of the planet will be spared the wrath of human-caused climate change and the earth’s fresh water is already feeling the heat of this new reality. More than half of the world’s lakes and two-thirds of its rivers are drying up…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Residents of a resettlement village in northern Luang Namtha province say they haven’t had access to a critical water source over the last seven months after mud and debris clogged up several wells built by the developer of a nearby dam.
Tavanh village and its water system were built on high ground in 2016 to house villagers displaced by the China-backed Namtha 1 Dam – one of dozens of hydropower dams built in Laos in recent years.
“The system built by the dam developer is completely useless,” said a villager, who like other sources in this report requested anonymity for safety reasons.
Some residents of Tavanh have built their own system by installing pipes to pump water from a nearby creek and lake, but that costs at least 1 million kip ($50) and the creek runs dry for much of April and May, the villager said.
Though the Lao government sees power generation as a way to boost the country’s economy, the dam projects are controversial because of their environmental impact, displacement of villagers and questionable financial and power-demand arrangements.
The developer of Namtha 1 Dam hired two subcontractors in 2015 to build 11 resettlement villages that included homes, health centers, offices, roads and schools.
More than 14,000 people moved to new villages because of the project. There are several hundred residents of Tavanh, which is about 10 km (6 miles) away from the Nam Tha River in the province’s Nalae district.
No action from authorities
During last year’s rainy season, the village’s wells flooded and then filled up with debris, dirt and mud, according to a second villager.
“The whole water system has broken down,” the second villager said. “It only worked for about a year. After that, it wasn’t so efficient and didn’t supply enough water.”
District authorities have promised to fix the system, but no action has been taken in the last seven months, several villagers said.
A district official told Radio Free Asia that he wasn’t aware of the problem.
“We didn’t know that the water system was damaged,” he said. “The village authorities have never informed us, never reported any problem to us. Our district authorities are going to check it out with the dam developer and villagers.”
The Namtha 1 Dam is a joint venture between China Southern Power Grid International Co. Ltd., which owns 80 percent of the project, and Electricite du Lao, with a 20 percent share.
It began operating in 2019. The dam sells most of its generated power to two special economic zones – the Golden Triangle SEZ in Bokeo province and the Boten SEZ in Luang Namtha, bordering China.
After 28 years of operation, ownership of the dam will transfer to the Lao government.
Translated by Max Avary. Edited by Matt Reed.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Lao.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Palestinians in Gaza are resorting to drinking from polluted agricultural wells that are almost as salty as seawater, posing an immediate health risk. Special thanks to 10Tooba for their work and partnership on this visual.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Bill Eisenman has always fished. “Growing up, we ate whatever we caught — catfish, carp, freshwater drum,” he said. “That was the only real source of fish in our diet as a family, and we ate a lot of it.” Today, a branch of the Rouge River runs through Eisenman’s property in a suburb north of Detroit. But in recent years, he has been wary about a group of chemicals known as PFAS…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Before the genocide, Palestinians in Gaza struggled to access clean water, with 97% of Gaza’s freshwater resources contaminated due to the Israeli blockade and repeated bombardments. Many families in poverty were forced to spend a third or more of their income to purchase water from unregulated sources, with the hopes that it is safe. Now, this already dire situation is exponentially worse.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.