Water Pollution

Solving The Water-Energy Crisis

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Published: June 25, 2010

Boston, Massachusetts The world is running out of water. By 2030, the UN projects that 60 percent of the global population will face water shortages, increasing social unrest and creating additional risk for companies.

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Salt Killing Crops, Driving Migration In Storm-Hit Southern Bangladesh

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Written by: AlertNet correspondentBangladeshi farmers plant rice in a field at Keraniganj on January 16, 2008. Worsening soil and water salinity is killing crops and driving migration in southern Bangladesh. REUTERS/Rafiqur Rahman 

By Syful Islam DHAKA, Bangladesh (AlertNet) - Worsening sea water storm surges and overuse of irrigation have left fields, wells and ponds in parts of southern Bangladesh too salty to grow crops, leading to a growing exodus of farmers from the region.

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UN Fears 'Irreversible' Damage To Natural Environment

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GENEVA — The UN warned on Monday that "massive" loss in life-sustaining natural environments was likely to deepen to the point of being irreversible after global targets to cut the decline by this year were missed. As a result of the degradation, the world is moving closer to several "tipping points" beyond which some ecosystems that play a part in natural processes such as climate or the food chain may be permanently damaged, a United Nations report said.

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Sanitation and Water Must No Longer Play Second Fiddle to Other Priorities

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Countries with the greatest unmet sanitation and water needs most often receive little or no aid. WASHINGTON, D.C. /CSRwire/ - Between 1997 and 2008, aid commitments for sanitation and water fell from 8% of total development aid to 5%, lower than commitments for health, education, transport, energy and agriculture, according to the latest UN-Water Global Annual Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS) report, launched today by UN-Water and the World Health Organization (WHO).

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First, The Great Pacific Garbage Patch; Now The Great Atlantic Patch

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Mike Melia, Associated PressSAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO – Researchers are warning of a new blight at sea: a swirl of confetti-like plastic debris stretching over a remote expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. The floating garbage — hard to spot from the surface and spun together by a vortex of currents — was documented by two groups of scientists who trawled the sea between scenic Bermuda and Portugal’s mid-Atlantic Azores islands.

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U.N. Report: Let's Turn Foul Water From Mass Killer Into Global Treasure

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • U.N. report: Polluted water kills about 2.2 million a year; wars claim fewer victims per year
  • Report also says wastewater could become valued resource if treated
  • Upfront costs to build treatment plants would be expensive, report says

(CNN) -- Contaminated and polluted water now kills more people than all forms of violence including wars, according to a United Nations report released Monday that calls for turning unsanitary wastewater into an environmentally safe economic resource.

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Waste Water Kills Millions Of Children, Pollutes Sea

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ABIDJAN, March 22 (Reuters) - Human beings are flushing millions of tonnes of solid waste into rivers and oceans every day, poisoning marine life and spreading diseases that kill millions of children annually, the U.N. said on Monday. "The sheer scale of dirty water means more people now die from contaminated and polluted water than from all forms of violence including wars," the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said.

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