Latest Drought Stories

By James Grubel CANBERRA (Reuters) - A third of the world is facing water shortages because of poor management of water resources and soaring water usage, driven mainly by agriculture, the International Water Management Institute said on Wednesday. Water scarcity around the world was increasing faster than expected, with agriculture accounting for 80 percent of global water consumption, the world authority on fresh water management told a development conference in Canberra. Globally,...

GENEVA (Reuters) - Rich countries have to make drastic changes to policies if they are to avoid the water crisis that is facing poorer nations, the WWF environmental organization said on Wednesday.In a survey of the situation across the industrialized world, it said many cities were already losing the battle to maintain water supplies as governments talked about conservation but failed to implement their pledges."Supporting large-scale industry and growing populations using water at high...

BEIJING (Reuters) - About 17 million people in southwest China don't have access to clean drinking water due to sustained drought, state media reported on Sunday. Crops on large tracts of farmland in Sichuan province and the nearby Chongqing municipality have withered due to the month-long drought, causing economic losses of 9.23 billion yuan ($1.15 billion), the Beijing News and the Xinhua news agency said. Local governments have allocated funds to help residents fight the drought by...

By S.M. Humayun KabirRAJSHAHI, Bangladesh (Reuters) - A rare drought in the middle of the monsoon season is threatening crops that account for up to a third of the country's staple rice output, especially in the north.Scant rainfall, falling river levels and lack of irrigation have left farmlands barren or sparsely planted, officials said on Wednesday.Villagers, many too poor to buy irrigation pumps or pay for fuel, were now praying for showers, which weather officials say are unlikely to...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A drought-hit Australian town could not swallow the idea of drinking recycled sewage water and rejected the water-saving option in a referendum on Saturday. Toowoomba, 140 km (85 miles) west of the Queensland state capital Brisbane, would have become the nation's first town to supplement drinking water with recycled waste water, a practice used in Israel, Singapore, the U.S. and parts of Europe. In the end, the "yuck factor" meant Toowoomba's 100,000 residents...

A study using NASA satellite data and weather records show the urban heat island effect, pollution, irrigation and population changes alter rainfall in desert cities. Urban areas with high concentrations of buildings, roads and other artificial surface soak up heat, lead to warmer surrounding temperatures, and create "urban heat-islands." This increased heat may promote rising air and alter the weather around cities. Human activities such as land use, additional aerosols and...

By Michael Byrnes DICKS CREEK, Australia (Reuters) - Farmer John Ive squints through the barbed wire fence separating the roadside from an ulcerous patch of ground where salt has risen from the earth to collapse the land into crumbling, barren ravines. Black stumps from an earlier fence, decayed from the bottom up by salt, dance from wire strands in the biting wind. "These sites are pockmarked across the southern tablelands," says Ive, shaking his head in despair at desertification of...

By Jeremy LovellLONDON (Reuters) - Far from being barren wastelands, the deserts that occupy one quarter of the earth's land surface could be key sources of food and power, the United Nations said on Monday.But these vast open spaces, home to rare and useful plants and animals, are at risk from climate change and human exploitation, the UN's Environment Program said in a report published on World Environment Day.Deserts are prime potential locations for solar power generators that do not...

BEIJING -- Chinese technicians have artificially generated heavy rainfall to wash a layer of sand and dust off Beijing, the official Xinhua news agency said on Friday.The Chinese capital was hit by a fierce wind storm last month which left the city cloaked in sand, much of it scooped up from the Gobi desert.The Beijing Weather Modification Office responded Thursday with a major cloud seeding operation."A total of 163 pieces of cigarette-like sticks containing silver iodide were burned...

By Andrew Cawthorne WAJID, Somalia (Reuters) - Only 20 percent of an emergency $426 million appeal to prevent a catastrophe for millions of people in the drought-hit Horn of Africa has been raised, a senior U.N. official said on Monday. Kjell Magne Bondevik, the U.N. special humanitarian envoy for the Horn of Africa, said 8 million people in the Horn need immediate aid and 7 million more are at risk if donors do not come up with the funding. "It is a silent tsunami. That is why the...