2021

Infrastructure Deal is Big News for WRRC and Water Sector

Did you know that the WRRC was part of the bipartisan infrastructure bill? The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed into law this week, contains historic investment in water resources and, of particular importance to the WRRC, it reauthorized the Water Resources Research Act (WRRA). As our readers may know, the WRRC is the water resources research institute for AZ, federally authorized under the WRRA.

Visualizing the aquifers that straddle the U.S.-Mexico border

Last year, amid widespread drought, a violent protest over water erupted in Chihuahua, Mexico, a state in the northwestern part of the country. Local farmers armed themselves with sticks, rocks and Molotov cocktails and took over the Boquilla Dam, which was holding the water they desperately needed to irrigate their crops. Two people died in confrontations with Mexican soldiers. 

International Hydro-diplomacy: Building and Strengthening Regional Institutions for Water Conflict Prevention

This study necessitates a call to action on transboundary water governance in the Himalayan region, Central Asia, and the Euphrates-Tigris river basin. If scarce water resources are viewed only strategically, there is a strong likelihood of shared waters becoming a source of contention and competition between riparian states. This possibility alone warrants international attention. The ever-changing security and environmental context make it imperative for internal and external stakeholders to discuss water issues more efficiently within policymaking.

An Urgent and Radical Rethink on Water

World leaders go into the COP26 climate talks with the most explicit warning to date from scientists that global temperatures will increase by at least 1.5C.

TxMAP: A new way to map with conservation data

When we collect data, we’re gifted a multidimensional story, and it’s up to the scientist in each of us to navigate the information one hypothesis at a time until we find relationships that solve complex natural resource issues. Like a trusty map from the glovebox with a pocket compass folded in the crease, the data reveals the best routes and the dead ends to avoid, but ultimately asks us to fuel our discoveries with creative inquisition.

Measuring success in transboundary water cooperation: lessons from World Bank engagements

How do we know when international cooperation is successful? A senior U.N. official once suggested that cooperation is like elephants mating: it all takes place at a very high level, there is a lot of noise, and it takes years to know the result. While this might be just a cynical joke, it contains a grain of truth: the success of international cooperation is often difficult to measure because results are often intangible and materialize over very long-time scales.

12 Important Things to Know About California's Drought

California is in a second year of drought. Gov. Gavin Newsom has asked residents to voluntarily cut water use by 15% across the state to try to shore up our reserves in case of another dry winter. In the meantime, fires are raging around California as bone-dry forests go up like tinderboxes. How did we get here?

Semarnat actualiza NOM 001 sobre descargas de aguas residuales, tras 25 años de parálisis

Para el Gobierno de México es prioritario atender la contaminación de los cuerpos de agua a fin de garantizar el derecho humano de las y los mexicanos sobre este recurso.

Universal Access to Clean Water for Tribal Communities

Water is Life. Access to clean and safe water is essential to public health, educational attainment, and economic development. Communities without clean water struggle to thrive. This is not welfare. Access to clean water is a basic right owed to Native Americans as part of the promises made in exchange for their ancestral homelands.

Borders as places of cooperation and reconciliation

The POLIS team is pleased to have welcomed Benjamin Perrier as a postdoctoral researcher over the past year, where his work is focusing on transnational law and transboundary watershed governance between Canada and the United States. ...

As Boundary Water Dispute Escalates, Pressure Mounts for Federal Intervention

The mining waste leaching into the transboundary watershed touching Montana and Idaho has increased the stakeholders' concerns on both sides of the border.

Transboundary Water Cooperation : Proportion of transboundary basin area with an operational arragement for water cooperation

Target 6.5 is: “By 2030, implement integrated water resources management at all levels, including through transboundary cooperation as appropriate.”

Protecting biodiversity through transboundary solutions in Africa

This Saturday, May 22, marks Biodiversity Day 2021, under the slogan, “We’re part of the solution #ForNature.” The slogan is a continuation of the momentum generated last year under the over-arching theme that our solutions are in nature itself, underscoring that biodiversity remains the answer to sustainable development challenges. In this blog, we turn our attention to the power of Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) and their goals to conserve ecosystems and support biodiversity.

Fallowing land to conserve groundwater not enough, New Mexico lawmakers say

A state program that pays Lower Rio Grande farmers not to pump groundwater for a year to gauge how it might help the aquifer during the drought drew criticisms from lawmakers Wednesday.

Vulnerabilidad del Cutzamala

El Sistema Cutzamala es un sistema hídrico con 39 años de funcionamiento, infraestructura para el almacenamiento, conducción, potabilización y distribución de agua.

The Water Convention and the Protocol on Water and Health

Do you know about the Water Convention? learn about how this international legal instrument and intergovernmental platform can be used to ensure the sustainable use of transboundary water resources

What will future water stress look like in transboundary basins?

There is growing awareness of the problems of water stress and scarcity around the world, and certainly action does need to be taken now in order to protect our water resources in the face of climate change and a growing global population.

Building River Dialogue and Governance

The BRIDGE programme works towards building river dialogue and governance in transboundary river basins. Implemented by IUCN and regional partners, BRIDGE works at the interface of hydrodiplomacy and local governance to promote new approaches in transboundary water management by:

• Facilitating cooperation
• Strengthening inter‐governmental capacities
• Creating spaces for dialogue and agreements

Sustentabilidad Agua-Virtual

¿Sabias que la mayoría del agua que se extrae la comsumimos de forma indirecta a través de productos y servicios?, a esto se le conoce como agua virtual… Lee más del tema en esta interesante nota de @aguaorgmx

The value of cooperation for sustainable development in transboundary river basins

Can cooperation across sectors and countries help to achieve sustainable development? How do stakeholders in the Indus and Zambezi basins envision the future and how can they make that future a reality? IIASA researchers looked into these questions as part of a large-scale initiative with international partners.

Declaración sobre el Día Mundial del Agua

¿Qué significa el agua para ti? debemos reflexionar que el valor del agua van más allá del económico, pues abarca dimensiones sociales, culturales y medioambientales #water2me

Transboundary Bulletin

Turkey’s water diplomacy, analysis of its foundations, challenges and prospects

Emerging dimensions of Bangladesh-India hydropolitical relations

The future of Bangladesh-India hydro-relations will not only be contingent upon what New Delhi and Dhaka will think, but will also be dependent on the Centre-State relations, and the federal states’ positions with respect to transboundary water governance.

Complexity of Transboundary Water Conflicts: Enabling Conditions for Negotiating Contingent Resolutions

How can our understanding of the complexity of water disputes enable us to sustainably manage our dwindling water resources? Why does a unified theory of water conflicts, although attractive among academics, remains elusive?

Sondas de regadío asoman como gran ayuda para combatir déficit hídrico

Gracias a innovador proyecto de sondas de regadío un grupo de agricultores logró mejorar el manejo de sus cultivos y optimizar el uso del recurso hídrico. La iniciativa busca ser replicada en otros sectores de la región, a través de la Seremía de Agricultura.
El mundo de la agricultura durante los últimos años ha enfrentado una serie de complicaciones generadas en gran parte por el déficit hídrico y los constantes cambios climáticos en la zona. Situación que ha llevado al límite los cultivos, enfrentando su etapa más crítica el año 2015.

Groundwater Salinization in California’s Tulare Lake Basin, the ABCSAL model

Excessive groundwater pumping have severe consequences at long-term but, do you know that it can cause progressive salinization?
Don't miss this interesting analysis in California's Tulare Lake Basin

Transformations to Groundwater Sustainability (T2GS) project

Have you hear about the T2GS project? if you are interested in international collaboration, groundwater governance, and groundwater sustainability, you may take a look to the link below

Explorations on gender in the world of water

Gender issues in the world of water! meet this amazing women scientists and how they are transforming the water sustainability and water diplomacy. Take a look

Parsing Routes to Aquifer Recharge Along Mountain Fronts

In many semiarid and arid regions around the world, groundwater drawn from basin-fill aquifers sustains local agriculture and large cities. Such aquifers are typically replenished by high-elevation precipitation and snowmelt along encircling mountain fronts via several pathways...

B.C.’s ‘dirty secret’: more than 100 contaminated mine sites threaten water, wildlife and communities

Decades after closing, an open-pit copper mine in northwest B.C. is still discharging wastewater with metal concentrations 250 times higher than what’s considered safe for salmon into Babine Lake, the sockeye salmon engine of the Skeena River watershed, according to a new report by SkeenaWild Conservation Trust and Lake Babine Nation. And the situation at the Granisle mine — one of two decommissioned mines on the lake — is indicative of what’s happening across the province

Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence to Propel Smart Water and Wastewater Leak Detection Solutions Market

Frost & Sullivan's recent analysis, Data Analytics and AI Boost Accuracy to Drive Global Smart Water and Wastewater Leak Detection Solutions Market, finds that the wastewater leak detection market has witnessed a significant rate of innovation and digital transformation. Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud- or edge-based data analytics platforms are boosting the market. By 2026, the market is estimated to garner a revenue of $1.99 billion from $1.23 billion in 2020, up at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.4%.

Water is Life': Record-Eagle testing project uncovers PFAS in Indigenous household wells

'Water is Life': Record-Eagle testing project uncovers PFAS in Indigenous household wells

Blue Peace, Invest in Peace through Water

Why invest in water and how to do so? BluePeace describe how transform water from a potential crisis source, into a potential cooperation and peace instrument in this brief report

Four U.S. Water Stories to Watch in 2021

Droughts, new national administration, growing of customer water debt, and PFAS Lawsuits are the events around water to follow the next year. Read about these four stories in this note

Will Water Unite Us?

Water is listed as an essential resource for health and economic recovery, as well as a source of political collaboration in the United States. Will Water Unite Us?