The summer Southwest monsoon has brought some rain and momentary relief to Chennai, but the question of how to mitigate water shortages (and excesses) are not gone. After my New York Times op-ed last month, I’ve had a chance to speak about water with others interested in the story. These issues are not disappearing anytime soon. From the World Resources Institute:
New data from WRI’s Aqueduct tools reveal that 17 countries – home to one-quarter of the world’s population—face “extremely high” levels of baseline water stress, where irrigated agriculture, industries and municipalities withdraw more than 80% of their available supply on average every year.
I spoke to Mark Goldberg on the Global Dispatches Podcast. In essence, do all the small stuff first: restore wetlands, enforce rainwater catchment mandates, educate on conservation, fix leaky pipes, capture water across the landscape with small-scale systems that work with nature, and not against it. Can India develop a new 21st-century model of sustainable development? The opportunity is still there, though hard to see evidence of embracing such possibility. Listen to the podcast here:
On the BBC’s podcast Beyond Today, I spoke with host Matthew Price about the crisis. BBC’s Rajini Vaidyanathan also reported from Chennai directly. Have a listen here.
I also make a cameo appearance in this Al Jazeera The Stream news piece, featuring Veena Srinivasan, a senior fellow with Ashoka Trust, Raj Bhagat Palanichamy, a data manager with World Resources Institute India, and T.M. Krishna, a musician, artist, and activist. Watch the episode here:
And then sit back and watch/listen to T.M. Krishna’s haunting song Poromboke:
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