Rights groups petition European watchdog to secure clean water in French Caribbean
Reuters The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) said on Thursday it has filed a collective complaint to a European rights body to demand that France urgently ensures access to drinking water in its Caribbean territory of Guadeloupe. The island territory has long faced water shortages, which right groups associate to poor infrastructure and contamination […]
Essay: When communities face drinking-water crises, bottled water is a ‘temporary’ solution that often lasts years − and worsens inequality
In an article first published on The Conversation, DANIEL JAFFEE, an associate professor of sociology at Portland State University in the US, says bottled water has become the default response in the US to natural disasters and human-made emergencies – and explains why that can be a problem…
Wow!: From pixels to pails, crowdfunded wells quench thirst in Senegal’s drylands
NGOUDA DIONE, of Reuters, reports on how builder and fundraiser Mamadou Diakhate is using the internet to fund wells in communities lacking water…
Essay: Billions still lack access to safe drinking water – this is a global human rights catastrophe
TAHSEEN JAFRY, director of the Mary Robinson Centre for Climate Justice at Glasgow Caledonian University, says that, alarmingly, there are more people now without access to clean water than there were three decades ago…
Heat adds to despair of Indian women after decades of daily treks for water
Hinauti, India Reuters India’s scorching summer heat adds new risks this year to an energy-sapping challenge that tribal woman Munni Adhivasi has surmounted every day for two decades, by trudging for miles to carry home water. Munni, who said she feared dying in the heat, teared up as she railed against the government’s failure to provide drinking water to more than 200 tribal families in her hamlet of Hinauti in northern Uttar […]
Wow!: “Giving life to dying land” – solar water pumps quench thirsty Kenyan farms
KAGONDU NJAGI, of Thomson Reuters Foundation, reports on the difference solar water pumps are making in the lives of farmers in Kenya’s Makueni County…
Automating access: Vending machines bring safe, cheap water to Nairobi slums
DOMINIC KIRUI, of Thomson Reuters Foundation, reports on how an initiative to install water-dispensing vending machines to ease the water access crisis in city slums…
World’s water woes spring from undervaluing its “blue gold”
Thomson Reuters Foundation Why are humans so enthusiastic about discovering traces of water on Mars, and yet do not treat the Earth’s supply of “blue gold” with the same respect nor seek to share it more fairly? So asks the World Water Development Report 2021, which argues that many people waste or misuse water because […]
Three-quarters of Somali families found lacking water as drought looms
Nairobi, Kenya/Garowe, SomaliaThomson Reuters Foundation Nearly three-quarters of Somali families lack safe drinking water as drought looms across the country and depletes wells, raising the risk of hunger as crops fail and livestock dies, UK-based charity Save the Children said on Monday. Climate change is taking a heavy toll across eastern Africa, and increasingly erratic […]
Pope decries shame of racism, like “virus” lurking in wait
Vatican CityAP Pope Francis on Sunday denounced racism, likening it to a virus that lurks in waiting and only to emerge and show that “our supposed social progress is not as real or definitive” as people think. Francis tweeted on racism on the date that the United Nations marks as International Day for the Elimination […]