2021.12.9
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The Year in Water, 2021: Water Crises Take Center Stage

Too much. Too little. Too polluted. Too frequent. 

If nothing else, the last 12 months of floods, fires, droughts, and other meteorological torments delivered an uncomfortable message. Extreme events are happening more often. And they are happening almost everywhere.

One positive trend is that severe weather is not as deadly as it was generations ago. But the pain is instead distributed in other ways. Homes washed away. Dry wells. Persistent hunger after failed harvests and reliance on food aid. Rebuilding again and again like this is wearying. Some want to move. Their neighbors may already have.

Limiting the damage from a fevered planet was the goal of a U.N. climate summit in November. Coming out of the summit, climate campaigners accused political leaders of another compact phrase -- of being too timid.

Without a greater sense of urgency this decade, the hill to climb becomes much steeper. Future leaders don’t want to find themselves adding another phrase to the list: too late.

Catch up on the biggest stories you may have missed this year from Circle of Blue. 
Tapped Out is produced in collaboration with the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), California Health Report, Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism, Circle of Blue, Colorado Public Radio, Columbia Insight, The Counter, High Country News, New Mexico In Depth and SJV Water. The project was made possible by a grant from the Water Foundation with additional support from INN.

As West Withers Corporations Consolidate Land and Water Rights
By Eli Francovich, Columbia Insight

With farms, ranches and rural communities facing unprecedented threats, a worrying trend leads to a critical question: Who owns the water?

Photo © Diana Robinson / Flickr Creative Commons

What’s Up With Water – December 6, 2021

For the news you need to start the week, tune into “What’s Up With Water” fresh on Monday’s on iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, and SoundCloud.

Featured coverage from this week's episode of What's Up With Water looks at: 

  • In Uganda, national regulators are cracking down on the illegal destruction of wetlands in an attempt to reduce flood risk in the east African country.
  • In the United States, a new mapping project in California has identified a neglected threat from climate change.
  • In Virginia, state officials and conservation groups are celebrating a milestone in the massive effort to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.

This week Circle of Blue reports on the growing water affordability problem in Michigan.

HotSpots H2O: Ongoing Madagascar Famine Is Driven By Poverty, Not Climate Change

After two below-average rainy seasons, Madagascar is in the grip of a deadly famine. Over one million people — half a million of them children — require emergency food aid, in what international leaders for months have been calling an emergency of enormous proportions.

International organizations had blamed the calamity on climate change, but a new study rejects that assumption. The study found that the main drivers of the famine are poverty, natural variations in weather, and poor infrastructure.

Although atmospheric warming has made severe droughts and heat waves more likely worldwide, the report found that the recent dry spell in Madagascar falls within the natural fluctuations of the country’s weather, which is highly variable. The finding aligns with conclusions in the U.N.’s recent state-of-the-science report, which noted that there was “limited evidence” that human influence has affected droughts in the region.
From Circle of Blue's Archives: 

Melissa Wiatrolik walks along Lake Michigan. She often monitors the shoreline by Cross Village for Odawa remains. Photo © J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue

The Year in Water, 2020: Societies Confront the Fallout from Rapid Environmental Change

Water crises, in many ways, are not like a pandemic, an event with a single, triggering cause. They are more diffuse and multi-faceted, and an individual crisis is usually constrained, not reverberating globally. But like the pandemic, water crises stem from environmental neglect and failures of leadership, and the repercussions of both are becoming more apparent every year.

2020 was no different.

All years impose their discomforts. Last year, in truth, stood out. Not just for the trials of the last 12 months. But as evidence of the tests yet to come. Environmental challenges of water, climate, and health are real and growing — visible for those who want to see them.
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