By Lisa Abend | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor / May 15, 2008 edition

http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/05/15/barcelona-floats-creative-solution-to-water-crisis/

With Spain's average rainfall down 40 percent last year, many cities have restricted residents from filling their swimming pools or watering their lawns. But perhaps no municipality has developed such diverse and creative solutions as hard-hit Barcelona, which this week began a €44 million ($68 million) operation to bring in drinking water by ship.

On Tuesday, the first vessel - from the southern city of Tarragona - arrived in Barcelona's port, where firemen discharged the ship's 20 tanks into a pipeline linked to the city's water distribution network. The next day, Barcelona residents were drinking Tarragona water from their taps.

The measure is designed to stave off a water crisis that has been building for some time and has reduced Barcelona's reservoirs to 20 percent of their capacity.

"For the past four years, we've had a shortage of rain," says Narcis Prat, a water expert at the University of Barcelona. "Now we have a shortage of water. Without significant rain, we only have enough to last until December."

Professor Prat points out that the population of Spain's second-largest city has grown by more than 1.5 million in the past 15 years, stretching limited resources further. That means the citizens' "excellent" conservation habits aren't enough, says Barcelona's mayor, Jordi Hereu.

"The area of Barcelona is exemplary in its consumption," he says. "But we're talking about 5.5 million people.... And all of them have a right to water."

...
The debate over the pipeline, which should be completed in October, has become so fierce that it's been dubbed the "water wars."

But even cooler heads see problems with it. "What we need is something that isn't just one-way. What we need is a whole network that guarantees supply ... so that water can circulate throughout the region," says Professor Armengol.

Local officials and the regional water authority argue that the multiple efforts will guarantee supplies in both the short and long term.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4313

Another week, another deadly natural disaster. China is struggling to dig survivors out from its worst natural disaster in three decades, and Burma's cyclone death toll continues to spiral upward due to sluggish rescue efforts. FP spoke to disaster expert Art Lerner-Lam about the world's disaster hot spots and the million-casualty earthquake that keeps him up at night.

...

ALL: We're all concerned about major, disastrous earthquakes. In particular, I'm worried about disastrous earthquakes in Asia. Large cities are built near faults, and there are cities that haven't seen earthquakes in 500 years but are due. It is entirely conceivable that we could see an earthquake kill a million people this century. It would not surprise seismologists.

On a more persistent basis, I am very worried about tropical cyclones---Myanmar just being the latest example. I think there's inadequate preparation for them, especially given the technology available to track them and give people prior warning. And the thing that my climate-scientist colleagues are worried about is the long-term climate trends that are going to lead to increasing drought. Drought is so intimately linked to the success of agriculture, and we already have a world food crisis. I worry about the potential for exacerbated drought, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

Art Lerner-Lam is director of the Center for Hazards and Risk Research at Columbia University's Earth Institute.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7405439.stm

By Mike Thomson
BBC News

Getting aid staff and relief supplies into Burma is already difficult. Criticise the country's generals and it threatens to become impossible.

This belief has prevented foreign aid agencies from airing problems they encounter with local authorities.

However, deepening concern about the fate of tens of thousands of people who have yet to get help, along with my promise of anonymity, has persuaded one senior aid agency worker to speak out.

...

This may come as a surprise to many, given that the regime is insisting that the cyclone relief operation is now over, even though thousands of people in the worst areas have yet to receive any help at all.

This bizarre claim comes at a time when Britain's Foreign Office estimates that 217,000 people may already have died, a figure that rises by the day and may soon surpass the number killed in 2004's tsunami.

One of the biggest concerns following Cyclone Nargis has been the Burmese junta's reluctance to help their own people whilst simultaneously rejecting most help from outside.

But James insists that it is still possible to get around the generals.