Community-Supported Agriculture
Hi Karim,
A Community Supported Agriculture program, or CSA, is an innovative method for linking farmers directly with consumers. That sounds nice, but what can CSAs do for you?
Find out all about what CSAs are, their benefits and flaws, and what they can do for you and your community, here.
https://foodrevolution.org/blog/what-is ... ant-1-of-2
SUMMARY
The pandemic has revealed deep flaws in our industrial food supply chain, leading many people to take an expanded interest in local farms. One of the most popular and fastest-growing models of farm-community commerce is the Community Supported Agriculture program, or CSA. In this article, you’ll find all about what CSAs are, their benefits and flaws, and how you might want to use this innovative model in your life.
Yours for healthy and sustainable food,
WORLD FOOD AND WATER CRISIS
Ensuring food security and improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers
Ensuring tangible food security, agricultural development and sustainable resource management has been at the centre of the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF)'s activities since it began. Agriculture remains the single largest employer in the world, providing livelihoods for 40 percent of today's global population. The world's 500 million small farms worldwide provide up to 80 percent of the food consumed.
However, 800 million people worldwide still lack regular access to adequate amounts of food. Adding to the traditional challenges is a changing climate that is impacting many farmers. Increasing global carbon emissions are affecting the yield and nutritional value of foods grown. Declining Himalayan snow and ice cover, expected to decline 20 percent by 2030, is impeding traditional means of irrigation.
AKF aims to enhance food security, increase sustainable utilisation of natural resources, improve livelihoods from agriculture and improve resilience towards climate change. Of particular importance is the role of women; it is estimated that the elimination of the gender gap would lower the number of undernourished people in the world by 150 million.
Gallery at:
https://www.akdn.org/gallery/ensuring-f ... er-farmers
Ensuring tangible food security, agricultural development and sustainable resource management has been at the centre of the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF)'s activities since it began. Agriculture remains the single largest employer in the world, providing livelihoods for 40 percent of today's global population. The world's 500 million small farms worldwide provide up to 80 percent of the food consumed.
However, 800 million people worldwide still lack regular access to adequate amounts of food. Adding to the traditional challenges is a changing climate that is impacting many farmers. Increasing global carbon emissions are affecting the yield and nutritional value of foods grown. Declining Himalayan snow and ice cover, expected to decline 20 percent by 2030, is impeding traditional means of irrigation.
AKF aims to enhance food security, increase sustainable utilisation of natural resources, improve livelihoods from agriculture and improve resilience towards climate change. Of particular importance is the role of women; it is estimated that the elimination of the gender gap would lower the number of undernourished people in the world by 150 million.
Gallery at:
https://www.akdn.org/gallery/ensuring-f ... er-farmers
Brazil Is Famous for Its Meat. But Vegetarianism Is Soaring.
The number of vegetarians in Brazil doubled over a six-year period, which has given rise to a booming plant-based industry that is seeking to turn meatpacking plants obsolete.
RIO DE JANEIRO — After years of whipping up large vegan meals for an ashram in the mountains outside Rio de Janeiro, Luiza de Marilac Tavares found her life upended, and herself out of a job, when the pandemic forced the center to shut down.
She started cooking from home, hoping to make ends meet by taking orders from people she knew. Instead, orders for her exquisite fare soared: With a little Instagram marketing, she had inadvertently tapped into Brazil’s booming demand for plant-based food.
The country, which is the world’s largest beef exporter, has seen a dramatic shift toward plant-based diets. The number of self-declared vegetarians in Brazil has nearly doubled over a six-year period, according to a poll by the research firm Ibope; 30 million people, or 14 percent of Brazilians, reported being vegetarian or vegan in 2018.
Ms. Tavares, a Hare Krishna who describes cooking as a sacred act that brings her closer to God, says, “There is a shift of consciousness underway.”
But the surge in demand extends well beyond the namaste set.
Mainstream supermarkets now stock foods made from plant-based protein next to its meat, poultry and fish. And in the toniest neighborhoods of major capitals, eateries that devote as much attention to atmosphere as they do to the menu serve up inventive, meatless dishes to a casually hip crowd.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/26/worl ... 778d3e6de3
The number of vegetarians in Brazil doubled over a six-year period, which has given rise to a booming plant-based industry that is seeking to turn meatpacking plants obsolete.
RIO DE JANEIRO — After years of whipping up large vegan meals for an ashram in the mountains outside Rio de Janeiro, Luiza de Marilac Tavares found her life upended, and herself out of a job, when the pandemic forced the center to shut down.
She started cooking from home, hoping to make ends meet by taking orders from people she knew. Instead, orders for her exquisite fare soared: With a little Instagram marketing, she had inadvertently tapped into Brazil’s booming demand for plant-based food.
The country, which is the world’s largest beef exporter, has seen a dramatic shift toward plant-based diets. The number of self-declared vegetarians in Brazil has nearly doubled over a six-year period, according to a poll by the research firm Ibope; 30 million people, or 14 percent of Brazilians, reported being vegetarian or vegan in 2018.
Ms. Tavares, a Hare Krishna who describes cooking as a sacred act that brings her closer to God, says, “There is a shift of consciousness underway.”
But the surge in demand extends well beyond the namaste set.
Mainstream supermarkets now stock foods made from plant-based protein next to its meat, poultry and fish. And in the toniest neighborhoods of major capitals, eateries that devote as much attention to atmosphere as they do to the menu serve up inventive, meatless dishes to a casually hip crowd.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/26/worl ... 778d3e6de3
Is the Burger Nearing Extinction?
Meat has more competition — and less justification — than ever before.
I liked my patties thin and then I liked them thick. There was the Cheddar period, followed by the Roquefort interregnum. Sesame-seed buns gave way to English muffins as ketchup traded places with special sauce or even, God help me, guacamole, which really was overkill.
But no matter its cradle or condiment, the hamburger was with me for the long haul — I was sure of that.
Until now.
A few days ago I tripped across news that McDonald’s was testing a vegetable-based patty, coming soon to a griddle near you. The McPlant burger, they’re calling it — a McOxymoron if ever I’ve heard one. And McDonald’s is late to the game. Burger King has been selling a meatless Impossible Whopper since 2019. Dunkin’ has been serving a Beyond Sausage Breakfast Sandwich for nearly as long.
Meanwhile, Bill Gates has been telling anyone who will sit still long enough to listen about his investment in a “pretty amazing” start-up that uses a protean protein made from an especially hardy fungus for meatless patties, meatless balls and vegan versions of various dairy products. Over the past weeks, he has plugged it on my Times colleague Kara Swisher’s “Sway” podcast and in Rolling Stone.
On “60 Minutes” he ate yogurt made by the start-up, Nature’s Fynd, with Anderson Cooper, who raved, “Oh, this is good.”
This is the future: not a meatless one — not anytime soon — but one with less meat. I’m now sure of that. It’s the inevitable consequence of alarm over climate change, to which livestock farming contributes significantly. (Gates’s meatless musings were in the context of his new book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.”)
It’s the moral of the McPlant. It’s also the takeaway from Nature’s Fynd, whose story is not just a parable of innovation and imagination but also a glimpse into the ever more muscular push for alternative protein sources and the fleetly growing market for them.
In the relatively brief span of time since Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat introduced their now-ubiquitous burger alternatives, a meatless gold rush was born. “Private investment, public investment, researchers working in this space, start-up companies, announcements from established meat companies launching alternative protein initiatives: All of these were essentially flat until about four or five years ago,” said Liz Specht, the director of science and technology for the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that promotes meat alternatives. “And then we saw a classic hockey-stick up-swerve.”
The swerve is happening along three main tracks, united by their elimination of the killing of livestock — and of livestock’s big carbon footprint — from the culinary equation.
One track, represented by Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, focuses on the refinement of plant-based products that get better and better at providing the pleasures of meat. Agriculture and its strains on Mother Earth remain central.
That’s not so with the track of what Specht calls “cultivated meats,” or meat essentially grown from the stem cells of animals. For now, though, this is an expensive and uncertain proposition.
Nature’s Fynd, which has attracted almost $160 million in funding, belongs to the third track: fermentation-derived proteins made from microorganisms, like fungi, that can be coaxed in a meaty, cheesy, creamy or milky direction. This track is arguably the most exciting — in terms of affordability, versatility, environmental gentleness and untapped possibility. There are microbes out there just waiting to feed us.
The one that Nature’s Fynd turned into its trademark protein, which it calls Fy, came from Yellowstone National Park of all places. Did you know that the park is a geological and ecological outlier, an extreme environment that’s home to herculean organisms whose ability to survive there suggests a potency deployable in any number of ways? Me neither.
But Mark Kozubal, a Montana scientist and outdoorsman, was up to speed and, more than a decade ago, was investigating the park’s hot springs and other waters for an “extremophile” that might be a useful biofuel. He came across an unclassified fungus that instead had culinary potential.
It has since been named Fusarium strain flavolapis. (Flavo lapis is Latin for yellow stone.) Nature’s Fynd got commercial rights to it from the federal government through a benefits-sharing agreement; the company supports continued research for the park. Kozubal is now the chief science officer for the company.
When the fungus is grown via a fermentation process patented by Nature’s Fynd, it produces rectangular slabs of Fy that look sort of like thick, gargantuan lasagna noodles. Fy can then be pulverized and watered down for soft or liquid foods, or it can be sculpted into nuggets, patties, balls and more.
“It’s got the texture that we want and the protein content that we want, but it’s a blank canvas that we can then give to food scientists and chefs to build into the products,” Kozubal told me. And it’s produced on racks of stacked trays — in a warehouse in the Chicago meatpacking district, as it happens — using much less space and water than traditional agriculture demands.
Last month, Nature’s Fynd unveiled a direct-order breakfast combo of faux-sausage patties and a mock cream cheese for $14.99 and quickly sold out. It’s restocking and expects to have those products plus others — maybe the yogurt, maybe meatballs — on store shelves later this year. If all goes well, it will expand from there. A burger can’t be too far off.
“There’s tremendous potential here,” Specht told me, referring to fermentation-derived proteins. She added that while they’ve been around awhile — a British company, Quorn, has been making them for decades — they seem to be taking off only now. For example, the companies Meati Foods, Mycorena and Prime Roots are all developing or selling products along these lines.
But given the long love affair that many humans, including this one, have had with animal meat, is there really a chance that these substitutes can make all that much headway in the near future? Thomas Jonas, the chief executive of Nature’s Fynd, said that a conspicuous change in America’s beverage-scape suggests so.
“Ten or 15 years ago, if you were looking at soy milk or almond milk, you were looking at something that was considered to be for health stores and tree-huggers and hippies, right?” he said. Now, both take up considerable space in every supermarket I visit, and there’s nary a coffee shop without one or the other. Nobody, Jonas argued, would have predicted that.
Also, he said, there’s a discernible awakening of people’s consciousness of the degradation of the environment, our contribution to that and the impact of individual behavior on communal health.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/06/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Meat has more competition — and less justification — than ever before.
I liked my patties thin and then I liked them thick. There was the Cheddar period, followed by the Roquefort interregnum. Sesame-seed buns gave way to English muffins as ketchup traded places with special sauce or even, God help me, guacamole, which really was overkill.
But no matter its cradle or condiment, the hamburger was with me for the long haul — I was sure of that.
Until now.
A few days ago I tripped across news that McDonald’s was testing a vegetable-based patty, coming soon to a griddle near you. The McPlant burger, they’re calling it — a McOxymoron if ever I’ve heard one. And McDonald’s is late to the game. Burger King has been selling a meatless Impossible Whopper since 2019. Dunkin’ has been serving a Beyond Sausage Breakfast Sandwich for nearly as long.
Meanwhile, Bill Gates has been telling anyone who will sit still long enough to listen about his investment in a “pretty amazing” start-up that uses a protean protein made from an especially hardy fungus for meatless patties, meatless balls and vegan versions of various dairy products. Over the past weeks, he has plugged it on my Times colleague Kara Swisher’s “Sway” podcast and in Rolling Stone.
On “60 Minutes” he ate yogurt made by the start-up, Nature’s Fynd, with Anderson Cooper, who raved, “Oh, this is good.”
This is the future: not a meatless one — not anytime soon — but one with less meat. I’m now sure of that. It’s the inevitable consequence of alarm over climate change, to which livestock farming contributes significantly. (Gates’s meatless musings were in the context of his new book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.”)
It’s the moral of the McPlant. It’s also the takeaway from Nature’s Fynd, whose story is not just a parable of innovation and imagination but also a glimpse into the ever more muscular push for alternative protein sources and the fleetly growing market for them.
In the relatively brief span of time since Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat introduced their now-ubiquitous burger alternatives, a meatless gold rush was born. “Private investment, public investment, researchers working in this space, start-up companies, announcements from established meat companies launching alternative protein initiatives: All of these were essentially flat until about four or five years ago,” said Liz Specht, the director of science and technology for the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that promotes meat alternatives. “And then we saw a classic hockey-stick up-swerve.”
The swerve is happening along three main tracks, united by their elimination of the killing of livestock — and of livestock’s big carbon footprint — from the culinary equation.
One track, represented by Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, focuses on the refinement of plant-based products that get better and better at providing the pleasures of meat. Agriculture and its strains on Mother Earth remain central.
That’s not so with the track of what Specht calls “cultivated meats,” or meat essentially grown from the stem cells of animals. For now, though, this is an expensive and uncertain proposition.
Nature’s Fynd, which has attracted almost $160 million in funding, belongs to the third track: fermentation-derived proteins made from microorganisms, like fungi, that can be coaxed in a meaty, cheesy, creamy or milky direction. This track is arguably the most exciting — in terms of affordability, versatility, environmental gentleness and untapped possibility. There are microbes out there just waiting to feed us.
The one that Nature’s Fynd turned into its trademark protein, which it calls Fy, came from Yellowstone National Park of all places. Did you know that the park is a geological and ecological outlier, an extreme environment that’s home to herculean organisms whose ability to survive there suggests a potency deployable in any number of ways? Me neither.
But Mark Kozubal, a Montana scientist and outdoorsman, was up to speed and, more than a decade ago, was investigating the park’s hot springs and other waters for an “extremophile” that might be a useful biofuel. He came across an unclassified fungus that instead had culinary potential.
It has since been named Fusarium strain flavolapis. (Flavo lapis is Latin for yellow stone.) Nature’s Fynd got commercial rights to it from the federal government through a benefits-sharing agreement; the company supports continued research for the park. Kozubal is now the chief science officer for the company.
When the fungus is grown via a fermentation process patented by Nature’s Fynd, it produces rectangular slabs of Fy that look sort of like thick, gargantuan lasagna noodles. Fy can then be pulverized and watered down for soft or liquid foods, or it can be sculpted into nuggets, patties, balls and more.
“It’s got the texture that we want and the protein content that we want, but it’s a blank canvas that we can then give to food scientists and chefs to build into the products,” Kozubal told me. And it’s produced on racks of stacked trays — in a warehouse in the Chicago meatpacking district, as it happens — using much less space and water than traditional agriculture demands.
Last month, Nature’s Fynd unveiled a direct-order breakfast combo of faux-sausage patties and a mock cream cheese for $14.99 and quickly sold out. It’s restocking and expects to have those products plus others — maybe the yogurt, maybe meatballs — on store shelves later this year. If all goes well, it will expand from there. A burger can’t be too far off.
“There’s tremendous potential here,” Specht told me, referring to fermentation-derived proteins. She added that while they’ve been around awhile — a British company, Quorn, has been making them for decades — they seem to be taking off only now. For example, the companies Meati Foods, Mycorena and Prime Roots are all developing or selling products along these lines.
But given the long love affair that many humans, including this one, have had with animal meat, is there really a chance that these substitutes can make all that much headway in the near future? Thomas Jonas, the chief executive of Nature’s Fynd, said that a conspicuous change in America’s beverage-scape suggests so.
“Ten or 15 years ago, if you were looking at soy milk or almond milk, you were looking at something that was considered to be for health stores and tree-huggers and hippies, right?” he said. Now, both take up considerable space in every supermarket I visit, and there’s nary a coffee shop without one or the other. Nobody, Jonas argued, would have predicted that.
Also, he said, there’s a discernible awakening of people’s consciousness of the degradation of the environment, our contribution to that and the impact of individual behavior on communal health.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/06/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Event
Water Management Under Extreme Conditions
Hosted by
AKU ISMC and AKAH
Water Management Under Extreme Conditions
A Panel Discussion by AKU ISMC and AKAH
24 March 2021 12:00 - 14:00 London time
Online
AKAH has provided safe drinking water supply systems to nearly 500,000 people in Northern Pakistan. Photo Credit AKAH Pakistan
The panel will discuss some of the challenges and lessons learned managing water supply and resources in extreme environments amongst some of the world’s highest mountains in Pakistan and arid, drought-prone fragile regions of Syria. Nawab Ali Khan, CEO of AKAH Pakistan, will talk about the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat’s experience over the past 25 years providing safely-managed, sustainable water supply systems to communities in Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral. AKAH is now working to expand the success of this rural, community-managed model to urban and peri-urban areas. Dr. Jeff Tan, Associate Professor at AKU ISMC, will share the first findings of joint research looking at the viability and potential to scale up this model in urban settings. Dr. Oula Shahin, Professor at Damascus University, will talk about the water crisis in Salamieh, Syria and her work with AKAH implementing an integrated water resource initiative, modelling groundwater systems and promoting community-led sustainable management practices. Surekha Ghogale, CEO of AKAH Syria will moderate the panel.
The Joint Lecture Series is a joint initiative of AKU-ISMC and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture's Education Programme; the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat and the Aga Khan Museum are also organizing partners this year.
The event is online. Please register here https://iis-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/regis ... NDhyBdXNaa
Water Management Under Extreme Conditions
Hosted by
AKU ISMC and AKAH
Water Management Under Extreme Conditions
A Panel Discussion by AKU ISMC and AKAH
24 March 2021 12:00 - 14:00 London time
Online
AKAH has provided safe drinking water supply systems to nearly 500,000 people in Northern Pakistan. Photo Credit AKAH Pakistan
The panel will discuss some of the challenges and lessons learned managing water supply and resources in extreme environments amongst some of the world’s highest mountains in Pakistan and arid, drought-prone fragile regions of Syria. Nawab Ali Khan, CEO of AKAH Pakistan, will talk about the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat’s experience over the past 25 years providing safely-managed, sustainable water supply systems to communities in Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral. AKAH is now working to expand the success of this rural, community-managed model to urban and peri-urban areas. Dr. Jeff Tan, Associate Professor at AKU ISMC, will share the first findings of joint research looking at the viability and potential to scale up this model in urban settings. Dr. Oula Shahin, Professor at Damascus University, will talk about the water crisis in Salamieh, Syria and her work with AKAH implementing an integrated water resource initiative, modelling groundwater systems and promoting community-led sustainable management practices. Surekha Ghogale, CEO of AKAH Syria will moderate the panel.
The Joint Lecture Series is a joint initiative of AKU-ISMC and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture's Education Programme; the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat and the Aga Khan Museum are also organizing partners this year.
The event is online. Please register here https://iis-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/regis ... NDhyBdXNaa
Water and Global Health Complexities and Challenges: Webinar hosted by AKU
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN7KuJydRzk
There has been significant progress in access to safe water and to a lesser extent adequate sanitation worldwide, but major scientific and social challenges remain. On 17 February 2021, the Aga Khan University Institute for Global Health and Development hosted a webinar involving a presentation and discussion on water and health in the context of climate change, issues of place, conflict and culture in water-related disease and the interplay of water, health, gender and wellbeing in the built environment. Today, AKDN is releasing the webinar on its channels to help bring attention to World Water Day.
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN7KuJydRzk
There has been significant progress in access to safe water and to a lesser extent adequate sanitation worldwide, but major scientific and social challenges remain. On 17 February 2021, the Aga Khan University Institute for Global Health and Development hosted a webinar involving a presentation and discussion on water and health in the context of climate change, issues of place, conflict and culture in water-related disease and the interplay of water, health, gender and wellbeing in the built environment. Today, AKDN is releasing the webinar on its channels to help bring attention to World Water Day.
World Water Day serves a stark reminder on Thar's thirst
Waterborne diseases from consumption of brackish water are a common phenomenon in Achhro Thar.
Mohammad Hussain Khan Updated about 11 hours ago
Held every year on March 22 since 1993, World Water Day celebrates water and raises awareness of the 2.2 billion people living without access to safe water across the globe.
The theme of this year's celebration is “valuing water”.
And in Pakistan, who can “value” water more than an ordinary inhabitant of Thar?
Many in Achhro Thar, which literally translates to the white desert, are unaware about the significance of the day. For dwellers like Jeo Hingorjo — a resident of the Hathungo part of Achhro Thar — taking care of livestock trumps all else.
And rightly so. That's because their survival depends on livestock rearing. Sweet water is just a luxury for them.
Herds of goats and camels graze the lands freely in all directions of the desert. Huts or chauhnras — made of thatched straw — dot the landscape and complement the white desert's serene beauty.
Huts made of thatched straw dot the desert’s landscape in Achhro Thar, Khipro, Sindh. — Photo by Umair Ali
A camel and donkey wander alone, unattended to in Achhro Thar, Khipro, Sindh. — Photo by Umair Ali
Traversing through sand dunes and large tracts of the unending desert in a modern 4x4 vehicle like we did is no less a joy ride compared to the locals’ routine mode of travel: overcrowded jeeps whose engines break down often.
These jeeps are used by residents to reach the barrage areas for different chores.
A much more recent phenomenon, jeeps are now commonly used to transport locals and their livestock. Before them, the rickety kekras — old US Army trucks — were the most common mode of transport for humans, livestock and goods alike. Now, these trucks are used mostly to transport goods.
Facing India’s Rajasthan desert in the east and spread around 4,800 square kilometres, Achhro Thar stretches from Khairpur and Ghotki, both districts on the left bank of the Indus, in upper Sindh, to Khipro and Sanghar talukas of Sanghar district in lower Sindh.
Sanghar is a barrage area and a highly rated cotton-producing district; though cotton production has now been facing a countrywide decline for the last several years.
Achhro Thar is named so because of the colour of its soil that makes it distinctive from other parts of Thar. The white desert has large swathes of clean sand dunes, known in local parlance as draih. According to the Sindh irrigation department’s estimates, the area has 95 per cent brackish subsoil water.
Water is transferred to a storage tank in Achhro Thar, Khipro, Sindh. — Photo by Umair Ali
“But it [Achhro Thar’s soil] is not culturable or fertile. Only small pockets of land have potential for crop cultivation after monsoon rains, like any other parts of the desert district of Mithi,” says Nawaz Kumbhar, who often writes on the area’s issues.
Fetching water at a distance of several kilometres is not unusual. Not to mention, it requires serious effort to lift water from a well which can be somewhere between 24.3 metres to 61 metres deep. I watched as three to four people, including women and young girls, collected water from one such well.
But waterborne diseases from consumption of brackish water are a common phenomenon here.
Symptoms of Fluorosis – a cosmetic condition that affects the teeth and is caused by overexposure to fluoride during the first eight years of life – were evident on the teeth of unkempt Thari children and adults with poverty writ large on their faces.
Women and children fetch water from a well in Achhro Thar, Khipro, Sindh. — Photo by Umair Ali
“We need a long rope and a bucket and obviously a pair of donkeys or one camel to bring water to our home from the well," says Jeo. “Pulling the rope from a well is not an easy job. It requires strength. So our camels or donkeys make this task achievable,” he says.
Jeo lives in the village of Asodar, with an estimated 100 households and population of 700 people, in the Khipro taluka.
The total dissolved solids in well water here are as high as 1,800 parts per million (ppm) versus safe limits of 1,000 ppm as per National Environmental Quality Standards and 500ppm recommended by the World Health Organisation.
“Taste-wise water looks good but it has started causing pain in [my] back and joints of [the] body,” says Jeo, adding that a number of residents have become bed-ridden or physically incapacitated.
Since soil in Achhro Thar doesn’t suit crop cultivation, the economic cycle of residents revolves around livestock — their bread and butter.
A child walks on barren and arid land in Achhro Thar, Khipro, Sindh. — Photo by Umair Ali
Locals cherish their livestock because it rescues them from hardship and ensures their survival when drought sets in. “We sell a few goats to bring ration for [the] household,” quips Ameer Bux Higorjo as he joins the conversation.
“Since our goats are weak, they don’t get a better price [in the] piri (cattle bazaar). I sell a goat for Rs8,000 or so,” he says.
Sanghar district has the second-highest livestock population as per the Sindh livestock department’s projected 2018 figures – 1.260 million goats, 238,624 sheep and 1.182m cows and buffaloes. Livestock holdings also vary from household to household.
A herd of cattle in Achhro Thar, Khipro, Sindh. — Photo by Umair Ali
To quote Khuman Singh Sodho, a social activist and resident of Jinhar, some residents here have 500 goats and others have 200. “So the size of livestock holding is different,” he says.
Travelling longer distances for treatment of medical ailments, more often than not a result of consuming brackish water, puts additional financial burden on residents. Having to go to Khipro city for even the most common illnesses doesn’t worry them as much as the Rs200 fare. And in cases of emergency, it costs more.
“We pay Rs4,000 to Rs5,000 to shift an expecting mother to a health facility located either in Khipro or near our border,” says Jeo.
Sodho believes the government needs to encourage people here to cultivate crops after some experiments. “Unless people shift to agriculture in areas where potential for crop cultivation exists, things won’t change. We will keep suffering. People are not willing to leave their abodes,” he says in a confident tone.
Ray of hope
But it seems all is not lost.
People in another area of Achhro Thar are somewhat lucky. Lately, they have been provided with the Indus river’s sweet water through a multi-billion rupee project thanks to the efforts of Shazia Marri, a young and energetic lower house member from Sanghar.
Marri won a directly contested seat from Sanghar, first in 2013 and then in 2018, to dent the stronghold of Pir Pagara whose political party, Pakistan Muslim League – Functional, had been ruling the roost until 2008. The PML-F did not bring any proposal to solve the area’s water woes.
Marri, PPP’s central information secretary, worked on a water supply project for Achhro Thar, which falls in her constituency, in collaboration with the Sindh irrigation department. It started in 2015 and was completed in 2018 when PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari inaugurated it on March 31, 2018.
A reservoir of water for a water supply project in Achhro Thar, Khipro, Sindh. — Photo by Umair Ali
These water supply schemes cater to the need of a population of approximately 30,000 humans and 25,000 livestock in 101 villages. The project, with a 5.85 million gallon storage in two settlements tanks and ponds, is connected to a solar-powered energy system in Jamalabad.
Water is then supplied to villages through underground tanks. If not wonders, the scheme has certainly brought a great degree of change in the lives of the population, lessening expenditures incurred on health with villagers no longer needing to travel to far-off places to fetch water.
A reservoir of water for a water supply project in Achhro Thar, Khipro, Sindh. — Photo by Umair Ali
“We don’t need to travel to far-off areas from our village like five to six kilometers. We get canal water in or near our villages,” says Rahim of Kak village, dominated by the Rajar community.
“We and our livestock drink the same water through underground storage,” he says.
Women fetching water in Chhachhro taluka, Mithi, Sindh. — Photo by Umair Ali
Rahim and other villagers agree that their health is changing as they no longer depend on subsoil groundwater that was the only source of water for them since the country's inception.
Children drinking water from a well in Achhro Thar, Khipro, Sindh. — Photo by Umair Ali
Nara Canal, one of the seven main and lengthiest canals of Sukkur Barrage, is the main source of water supply for this scheme. Water is stored at zero point in Jamalabad area, according to irrigation officer Mansoor Memon, who was part of project’s execution.
Villagers living in the right and left catchments of storage tanks get water through pipelines. Air valves are also established at smaller distances to drop water from the valve which is then consumed by herds of goat, sheep, camel, and cattle.
Perhaps, other parts of Achhro Thar can also be connected with piped water supply through the same Nara Canal after its realignment is completed, conditional on the irrigation department getting the government’s nod.
Till then, residents of the white desert will continue to suffer from polluted water in harsh weather conditions, aggravated further by climate change.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1613974/world ... ars-thirst
Waterborne diseases from consumption of brackish water are a common phenomenon in Achhro Thar.
Mohammad Hussain Khan Updated about 11 hours ago
Held every year on March 22 since 1993, World Water Day celebrates water and raises awareness of the 2.2 billion people living without access to safe water across the globe.
The theme of this year's celebration is “valuing water”.
And in Pakistan, who can “value” water more than an ordinary inhabitant of Thar?
Many in Achhro Thar, which literally translates to the white desert, are unaware about the significance of the day. For dwellers like Jeo Hingorjo — a resident of the Hathungo part of Achhro Thar — taking care of livestock trumps all else.
And rightly so. That's because their survival depends on livestock rearing. Sweet water is just a luxury for them.
Herds of goats and camels graze the lands freely in all directions of the desert. Huts or chauhnras — made of thatched straw — dot the landscape and complement the white desert's serene beauty.
Huts made of thatched straw dot the desert’s landscape in Achhro Thar, Khipro, Sindh. — Photo by Umair Ali
A camel and donkey wander alone, unattended to in Achhro Thar, Khipro, Sindh. — Photo by Umair Ali
Traversing through sand dunes and large tracts of the unending desert in a modern 4x4 vehicle like we did is no less a joy ride compared to the locals’ routine mode of travel: overcrowded jeeps whose engines break down often.
These jeeps are used by residents to reach the barrage areas for different chores.
A much more recent phenomenon, jeeps are now commonly used to transport locals and their livestock. Before them, the rickety kekras — old US Army trucks — were the most common mode of transport for humans, livestock and goods alike. Now, these trucks are used mostly to transport goods.
Facing India’s Rajasthan desert in the east and spread around 4,800 square kilometres, Achhro Thar stretches from Khairpur and Ghotki, both districts on the left bank of the Indus, in upper Sindh, to Khipro and Sanghar talukas of Sanghar district in lower Sindh.
Sanghar is a barrage area and a highly rated cotton-producing district; though cotton production has now been facing a countrywide decline for the last several years.
Achhro Thar is named so because of the colour of its soil that makes it distinctive from other parts of Thar. The white desert has large swathes of clean sand dunes, known in local parlance as draih. According to the Sindh irrigation department’s estimates, the area has 95 per cent brackish subsoil water.
Water is transferred to a storage tank in Achhro Thar, Khipro, Sindh. — Photo by Umair Ali
“But it [Achhro Thar’s soil] is not culturable or fertile. Only small pockets of land have potential for crop cultivation after monsoon rains, like any other parts of the desert district of Mithi,” says Nawaz Kumbhar, who often writes on the area’s issues.
Fetching water at a distance of several kilometres is not unusual. Not to mention, it requires serious effort to lift water from a well which can be somewhere between 24.3 metres to 61 metres deep. I watched as three to four people, including women and young girls, collected water from one such well.
But waterborne diseases from consumption of brackish water are a common phenomenon here.
Symptoms of Fluorosis – a cosmetic condition that affects the teeth and is caused by overexposure to fluoride during the first eight years of life – were evident on the teeth of unkempt Thari children and adults with poverty writ large on their faces.
Women and children fetch water from a well in Achhro Thar, Khipro, Sindh. — Photo by Umair Ali
“We need a long rope and a bucket and obviously a pair of donkeys or one camel to bring water to our home from the well," says Jeo. “Pulling the rope from a well is not an easy job. It requires strength. So our camels or donkeys make this task achievable,” he says.
Jeo lives in the village of Asodar, with an estimated 100 households and population of 700 people, in the Khipro taluka.
The total dissolved solids in well water here are as high as 1,800 parts per million (ppm) versus safe limits of 1,000 ppm as per National Environmental Quality Standards and 500ppm recommended by the World Health Organisation.
“Taste-wise water looks good but it has started causing pain in [my] back and joints of [the] body,” says Jeo, adding that a number of residents have become bed-ridden or physically incapacitated.
Since soil in Achhro Thar doesn’t suit crop cultivation, the economic cycle of residents revolves around livestock — their bread and butter.
A child walks on barren and arid land in Achhro Thar, Khipro, Sindh. — Photo by Umair Ali
Locals cherish their livestock because it rescues them from hardship and ensures their survival when drought sets in. “We sell a few goats to bring ration for [the] household,” quips Ameer Bux Higorjo as he joins the conversation.
“Since our goats are weak, they don’t get a better price [in the] piri (cattle bazaar). I sell a goat for Rs8,000 or so,” he says.
Sanghar district has the second-highest livestock population as per the Sindh livestock department’s projected 2018 figures – 1.260 million goats, 238,624 sheep and 1.182m cows and buffaloes. Livestock holdings also vary from household to household.
A herd of cattle in Achhro Thar, Khipro, Sindh. — Photo by Umair Ali
To quote Khuman Singh Sodho, a social activist and resident of Jinhar, some residents here have 500 goats and others have 200. “So the size of livestock holding is different,” he says.
Travelling longer distances for treatment of medical ailments, more often than not a result of consuming brackish water, puts additional financial burden on residents. Having to go to Khipro city for even the most common illnesses doesn’t worry them as much as the Rs200 fare. And in cases of emergency, it costs more.
“We pay Rs4,000 to Rs5,000 to shift an expecting mother to a health facility located either in Khipro or near our border,” says Jeo.
Sodho believes the government needs to encourage people here to cultivate crops after some experiments. “Unless people shift to agriculture in areas where potential for crop cultivation exists, things won’t change. We will keep suffering. People are not willing to leave their abodes,” he says in a confident tone.
Ray of hope
But it seems all is not lost.
People in another area of Achhro Thar are somewhat lucky. Lately, they have been provided with the Indus river’s sweet water through a multi-billion rupee project thanks to the efforts of Shazia Marri, a young and energetic lower house member from Sanghar.
Marri won a directly contested seat from Sanghar, first in 2013 and then in 2018, to dent the stronghold of Pir Pagara whose political party, Pakistan Muslim League – Functional, had been ruling the roost until 2008. The PML-F did not bring any proposal to solve the area’s water woes.
Marri, PPP’s central information secretary, worked on a water supply project for Achhro Thar, which falls in her constituency, in collaboration with the Sindh irrigation department. It started in 2015 and was completed in 2018 when PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari inaugurated it on March 31, 2018.
A reservoir of water for a water supply project in Achhro Thar, Khipro, Sindh. — Photo by Umair Ali
These water supply schemes cater to the need of a population of approximately 30,000 humans and 25,000 livestock in 101 villages. The project, with a 5.85 million gallon storage in two settlements tanks and ponds, is connected to a solar-powered energy system in Jamalabad.
Water is then supplied to villages through underground tanks. If not wonders, the scheme has certainly brought a great degree of change in the lives of the population, lessening expenditures incurred on health with villagers no longer needing to travel to far-off places to fetch water.
A reservoir of water for a water supply project in Achhro Thar, Khipro, Sindh. — Photo by Umair Ali
“We don’t need to travel to far-off areas from our village like five to six kilometers. We get canal water in or near our villages,” says Rahim of Kak village, dominated by the Rajar community.
“We and our livestock drink the same water through underground storage,” he says.
Women fetching water in Chhachhro taluka, Mithi, Sindh. — Photo by Umair Ali
Rahim and other villagers agree that their health is changing as they no longer depend on subsoil groundwater that was the only source of water for them since the country's inception.
Children drinking water from a well in Achhro Thar, Khipro, Sindh. — Photo by Umair Ali
Nara Canal, one of the seven main and lengthiest canals of Sukkur Barrage, is the main source of water supply for this scheme. Water is stored at zero point in Jamalabad area, according to irrigation officer Mansoor Memon, who was part of project’s execution.
Villagers living in the right and left catchments of storage tanks get water through pipelines. Air valves are also established at smaller distances to drop water from the valve which is then consumed by herds of goat, sheep, camel, and cattle.
Perhaps, other parts of Achhro Thar can also be connected with piped water supply through the same Nara Canal after its realignment is completed, conditional on the irrigation department getting the government’s nod.
Till then, residents of the white desert will continue to suffer from polluted water in harsh weather conditions, aggravated further by climate change.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1613974/world ... ars-thirst
‘People need help now, they can’t wait’ – Land, Water and Borders along the Silk Road
In 2019, AKF's Nick McGrath travelled to the Uzbek-Tajik-Kyrgyz border regions to find out how AKDN is working to help ease tensions over resources
The sudden and dramatic collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 saw the emergence of the independent states of Central Asia. For a landlocked and historically interconnected region, the formalising and hardening of new national borders – once open and porous – has had a huge impact on regional cooperation and stability.
Localised, border conflicts over the control of resources, particularly around irrigation water and grazing lands, are increasingly affecting local, regional, and international relations.
With much of the world rediscovering this forgotten region due to the colossal ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ being implemented by the Chinese government, I travelled to the troubled border regions of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to find out more about how the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) and its partners are working with border communities to address complex challenges facing people living in the borderlands of the former Silk Road.
Criss-cross border, divided communities
The Soviet era saw massive industrialisation and investment in infrastructure and public services in Central Asia, but left a complex legacy of ethnic tension and environmental problems.
Tortuous, centrally planned borders criss-cross the region, often leaving Uzbek, Kyrgyz and Tajik communities on different sides of increasingly harder borders, but reliant on the same shared natural resources of land and water.
As the head of the district water department in Ferghana on the Kyrgyz side of the Kyrgyz–Uzbek border explains:
“A significant part of the population here are Uzbeks. The rest are Kyrgyz. We grew up together. We are the same people. Lots of people have family relations across the border. My sister married an Uzbek and lives in Uzbekistan.”
Water for irrigating the primary crop in the region, wheat, and land for grazing livestock are under intense pressure, but sources have been partitioned across hard borders. He continued:
“During the Soviet era people were collectivised and water was piped directly to collective farms. When the Soviet system ended, governance of water collapsed. Families were taking water as they wanted. Irrigation canals were badly damaged.”
In the ensuing collapse, government budgets disappeared overnight, and transition from a state centric model of free services to a market economy saw the establishment of community-run Water User Associations (WUA), to relieve pressure on local government. As a local WUA member in Osh district explained:
“The local government couldn’t afford to manage water anymore. In the past water was free. But slowly fees were introduced. There was a lot of resistance. People said ‘why should we pay for water from God?’ We had to establish a conflict mitigation committee to deal with disputes in the community over access to water.”
More...
https://www.akf.org.uk/people-need-help ... 25c8c5fc8d
In 2019, AKF's Nick McGrath travelled to the Uzbek-Tajik-Kyrgyz border regions to find out how AKDN is working to help ease tensions over resources
The sudden and dramatic collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 saw the emergence of the independent states of Central Asia. For a landlocked and historically interconnected region, the formalising and hardening of new national borders – once open and porous – has had a huge impact on regional cooperation and stability.
Localised, border conflicts over the control of resources, particularly around irrigation water and grazing lands, are increasingly affecting local, regional, and international relations.
With much of the world rediscovering this forgotten region due to the colossal ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ being implemented by the Chinese government, I travelled to the troubled border regions of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to find out more about how the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) and its partners are working with border communities to address complex challenges facing people living in the borderlands of the former Silk Road.
Criss-cross border, divided communities
The Soviet era saw massive industrialisation and investment in infrastructure and public services in Central Asia, but left a complex legacy of ethnic tension and environmental problems.
Tortuous, centrally planned borders criss-cross the region, often leaving Uzbek, Kyrgyz and Tajik communities on different sides of increasingly harder borders, but reliant on the same shared natural resources of land and water.
As the head of the district water department in Ferghana on the Kyrgyz side of the Kyrgyz–Uzbek border explains:
“A significant part of the population here are Uzbeks. The rest are Kyrgyz. We grew up together. We are the same people. Lots of people have family relations across the border. My sister married an Uzbek and lives in Uzbekistan.”
Water for irrigating the primary crop in the region, wheat, and land for grazing livestock are under intense pressure, but sources have been partitioned across hard borders. He continued:
“During the Soviet era people were collectivised and water was piped directly to collective farms. When the Soviet system ended, governance of water collapsed. Families were taking water as they wanted. Irrigation canals were badly damaged.”
In the ensuing collapse, government budgets disappeared overnight, and transition from a state centric model of free services to a market economy saw the establishment of community-run Water User Associations (WUA), to relieve pressure on local government. As a local WUA member in Osh district explained:
“The local government couldn’t afford to manage water anymore. In the past water was free. But slowly fees were introduced. There was a lot of resistance. People said ‘why should we pay for water from God?’ We had to establish a conflict mitigation committee to deal with disputes in the community over access to water.”
More...
https://www.akf.org.uk/people-need-help ... 25c8c5fc8d
Hi Karim,
Question: What’s the single largest irrigated crop in the United States?
Answer: Lawns.
In fact — get ready to have your mind blown with this one — right now in the US, 10 million acres of land are used for all fruits and veggies grown in the nation, while 32 million acres are used to grow lawns.
If we converted lawns to gardens, we could free up PLENTY of land to grow abundant fruits and vegetables. And we’d also save water, pesticides, and maintenance time!
Get the whole story along with tips for turning lawns into gardens, here.
https://foodrevolution.org/blog/benefit ... nd-gardens
Yours for growing food and healing the world,
Ocean Robbins
Farms. Food. Future.
Farms. Food. Future. looks at the big issues facing farmers in the developing world and what needs to be done to wipe out global hunger while dealing with the climate crisis. It’s brought to you by the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development and presented by Brian Thomson.
Listen to the podcasts at:
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/f ... 1488616432
Farms. Food. Future. looks at the big issues facing farmers in the developing world and what needs to be done to wipe out global hunger while dealing with the climate crisis. It’s brought to you by the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development and presented by Brian Thomson.
Listen to the podcasts at:
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/f ... 1488616432
Hoover Dam, a symbol of the modern West, faces an epic water shortage
Ian James, Arizona Republic
Sun, June 6, 2021, 2:20 PM
BOULDER CITY, Nevada — Hoover Dam towers more than 700 feet above Black Canyon on the Arizona-Nevada state line, holding back the waters of the Colorado River. On top of the dam, where visitors peer down the graceful white arc of its face, one of its art deco-style towers is adorned with a work of art that memorializes the purposes of the dam.
In five relief sculptures by Oskar Hansen, muscular men are shown gripping a boat’s wheel, harvesting an armful of wheat, standing beside cascading water and lifting a heavy weight overhead. With the concrete figures are words that encapsulate why the dam was built, as laid out in a 1928 law: FLOOD CONTROL, NAVIGATION, IRRIGATION, WATER STORAGE and POWER.
Eighty-six years after its completion in 1935, the infrastructure at Hoover Dam continues doing what it was designed to do: holding water and sending it coursing through intake tunnels, spinning turbines and generating electricity. But the rules for managing the river and dividing up its water — which were laid down nearly a century ago starting with the 1922 Colorado River Compact and which have repeatedly been tweaked — are now facing the greatest strains since the dam was built.
The effects of years of severe drought and temperatures pushed higher by climate change are strikingly visible along Lake Mead’s retreating shorelines near Las Vegas, where the growing “bathtub ring” of whitish minerals coats the rocky desert slopes.
Since 2000, the water level in Lake Mead, which is the reservoir formed by Hoover Dam and holds the title of the largest reservoir in the country, has dropped about 140 feet. It is now just 37% full, headed for a first-ever official shortage and sinking toward its lowest levels since it was filled.
One of the West's driest 22-year periods in centuries is colliding with the river's chronic overuse. As the reservoir falls toward record lows, its decline threatens the water supplies of cities and farmlands, and reveals how the system of managing water in the desert Southwest faces growing risks.
Hoover Dam and Lake Mead photographed from the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge on May 10, 2021. A high-water mark or "bathtub ring" is visible on the shoreline.
Water levels expected to fall below federal threshold this summer
Mike Bernardo of the federal Bureau of Reclamation leads a team of engineers and hydrologists who plan water releases from Hoover Dam, as well as Davis and Parker dams downstream, sending flows that travel through pipelines and canals to Phoenix, Los Angeles and farmlands in the U.S. and Mexico that produce crops such as hay, cotton, grapes and lettuce.
Bernardo’s team also sets power generation goals and produces a monthly report with the latest projections of how reservoir levels will likely change over the next 24 months.
Lately, each month’s report has brought worsening numbers.
Predicted water-level declines have grown as estimates of inflows into Lake Powell, the upstream reservoir, have shrunk due to extremely parched conditions across the upper watershed in the Rocky Mountains, where much of the river’s flow originates as melting snow.
“Unfortunately, due to how dry things have been,” Bernardo says, “what we're seeing is Lake Powell's elevations are dropping.”
And that will mean less water flowing into Lake Mead for the rest of the year. The past 12 months have been among the driest on record across the Colorado River Basin. Inflows into Lake Powell from April through July are estimated to be just 26% of the long-term average, and that’s leading to rapid declines in both Powell and Mead, the two largest pieces of the river's water-storage system.
The warm, dry conditions over the past two years have baked the watershed’s soils to such an extent, Bernardo says, that “when the snowmelt starts to run off, it just gets sucked up into the ground like a sponge.”
But the demands for water downstream from Hoover Dam continue. And with the Southwest’s farmlands in peak irrigation season through June, Bernardo says, Lake Mead’s surface is dropping about 1 foot each week.
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Mike Bernardo of the federal Bureau of Reclamation, at Hoover Dam in May 2021.
Mike Bernardo of the federal Bureau of Reclamation, at Hoover Dam in May 2021.
The reservoir has declined more than 16 feet over the past year and is forecast to fall about 9 feet more by the end of this year.
The latest projections show that by the end of 2021, Lake Mead will decline below an elevation of 1,066 feet, far below the threshold — 1,075 feet — for the federal government to declare a shortage. That’s expected to happen in August, triggering the largest water cuts to date next year for Arizona, Nevada and Mexico.
Even larger cutbacks could come in 2023 if the reservoir continues to decline as projected over the next year into a more severe “Tier 2” shortage.
Lake Mead's downward spiral is being driven largely by the dire situation upstream at Lake Powell, which has declined to 34% of full capacity.
“We need three to four consecutive years of above-average inflow, snowpack runoff and inflow into Lake Powell, to refill these reservoirs,” Bernardo says. “So that's what we're hoping for.”
The Colorado River naturally cycles through wet and dry periods. But over the past 22 years, the watershed has had 17 dry years, Bernardo says, and only 5 years with above-average or wet conditions.
With climate change, hotter temperatures have been evaporating more moisture off the landscape and leaving less flowing in the river and its tributaries. Scientists describe it as a “megadrought” and one that, unlike the long droughts of the past, is being amplified by carbon pollution and the heating of the planet.
One of the unknowns facing the officials who manage Colorado River water is just how severely the reservoirs could be affected by climate-driven “aridification” in the years to come. But some scientists have estimated the river could lose roughly one-fourth of its flow by 2050 as temperatures continue to rise, and that for each additional 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F) of warming, the average flow is likely to drop by about 9%.
“With the warmer temperatures,” Bernardo says, “not only do we see things melt off quicker but you have that rising snow line, which creates less inflow.”
The Overton Arm of Lake Mead at Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada. The reservoir has declined dramatically since 2000.
The Overton Arm of Lake Mead at Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada. The reservoir has declined dramatically since 2000.
The declines in the reservoirs have accelerated over the past two years.
In 2019, representatives of Arizona, Nevada and California agreed under a deal called the Drought Contingency Plan to share in water reductions through 2026 to reduce the risks of Lake Mead falling to critically low levels. The agreement calls for progressively larger cutbacks if Lake Mead continues to drop below lower trigger points in the coming years.
If the reservoir drops below 1,045 feet, California would start to take cuts. And Mexico is already contributing by leaving some water in Lake Mead.
“These mechanisms have been put into place to protect these reservoir elevations,” Bernardo says.
While the latest agreement is intended as a temporary stopgap measure, officials from the seven states that depend on the river are preparing to negotiate new rules for managing shortages after 2026. And those talks promise to be tougher.
In the meantime, Bernardo says, the bureau's responsibilities in managing the dams and water deliveries remain the same. And that includes incorporating the latest science and models, and providing up-to-date information to representatives of the states, water districts, tribes and other entities along the river, Bernardo says, “to communicate what's going on and what we're seeing, so everyone can act proactively.”
“When you have a river system like this, a complex reservoir and river system especially, that is experiencing the hydrology that we've been seeing, and such a quick decline in the Upper Basin over these last two years, transparency and communication is key,” Bernardo says.
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Bernardo is 35 and has worked for the Bureau of Reclamation for nearly a decade, including the last two years as river operations manager. A mechanical engineer who grew up in New Jersey, he usually works with his staff at the agency’s office in Boulder City, Nevada, but he also regularly drives out to visit the dam, sometimes to lead special tours.
Whenever he rounds the curve in the canyon and sees the dam, Bernardo says, he feels awestruck and “the hair still sticks up on my arms.”
“It never gets old,” he says. “I’m wowed by the engineering marvel.”
Part of that comes from knowing the history of all that went into the dam’s design and construction during the Great Depression, from the hand-drawn blueprints to the blasting with dynamite, the railroad that carried supplies, and the massive amounts of concrete that were poured in, creating a dam that is 660 feet thick at its base — nearly as thick between the reservoir and the downstream side as it is tall. (According to the Bureau of Reclamation, Hoover Dam contains enough concrete to build a sidewalk 4-feet wide around the entire Earth at the equator.)
Whenever he visits the dam, Bernardo says, its historical significance is also inescapable: how it controlled the Colorado’s floods, opened up arid lands for farming and fed the rise of cities across the Southwest. As he describes it, the dam “helped nourish our nation” and helped the West thrive.
“We like to show it off,” he says.
With higher lake levels, Hoover Dam's normal capacity is 2,074 megawatts, Bernardo explains, generating enough power per year to supply approximately 450,000 average households. But at today’s lake level, the dam’s capacity has decreased about 25% to 1,567 megawatts, and it’s generating enough power for roughly 350,000 homes.
With every foot the lake declines, about 6 megawatts of power-generating capacity is lost.
The lowest level at which Hoover could produce power is about 950 feet, with an expected capacity of 650 megawatts. If the lake were to fall below that point — a scenario the existing rules are geared toward avoiding — the dam would no longer be able to generate power.
The generator/turbine gallery on the Arizona side, May 11, 2021, at Hoover Dam, on the Arizona/Nevada border.
The generator/turbine gallery on the Arizona side, May 11, 2021, at Hoover Dam, on the Arizona/Nevada border.
As the reservoir continues to decline, releasing the same amount of water yields a bigger drop in lake level.
“That's one of the concerning pieces,” Bernardo says. “The reservoir is shaped, we call it a teacup, but more like a martini glass. And the lower the elevation goes, the faster the rate of decline.”
That dynamic also affects how much the planned water cuts can help Mead’s level. Under a first-tier shortage next year, for example, Arizona, Nevada and Mexico are preparing for cuts totaling 613,000 acre-feet, which Bernardo says is equivalent to 7-8 feet of elevation in Lake Mead.
If the reservoir were to drop through lower shortage levels to below 1,025 feet, the total cuts among the three states and Mexico would add up to more than 1.3 million acre-feet. That amount, Bernardo says, would equal nearly 20 feet conserved in Lake Mead at those low levels.
When representatives of California, Arizona and Nevada were negotiating the deal, they decided on 1,025 feet as a threshold to avoid, and one they thought the lake would be unlikely to reach. The agreement also includes a backup provision. If the two-year projections show Mead is likely to decline below 1,030 feet, the agreement says the states and the Interior secretary “shall consult and determine what additional measures will be taken.”
The government’s latest five-year projections, using an approach that considers the river’s lower flows over the past three decades, estimates a 25% chance of Lake Mead declining below 1,025 feet in 2025.
Much could change, though, with a snowy winter in the mountains.
“We hope and we feel very strongly that the measures that have been put into place should slow down the decline,” Bernardo says. “Now, if it's enough to make it recover, your guess is as good as mine, because the hydrology has been so bad.”
But if the river basin gets a wet year with average flows, Bernardo says, the cutbacks in the existing plan “will buy us time to get to the next year, in hopes to get a better water year.”
“And I think that's what the system is designed to do,” he says.
An ‘Era of Limits’
The outlook for the Colorado River has grown increasingly dire over the past several years. In one study, scientists found that about half the trend of decreasing runoff in the Upper Colorado River Basin since 2000 was due to unprecedented warming.
Other researchers warned in a report this year that an “incremental approach to adaptation” is unlikely to be enough in the future. They pointed out that flows from 2000 through 2018 were about 18% less than the 20th century average and said the downward trend will likely continue as temperatures rise with climate change.
Worries about overusing the river predate the current dry spell. In fact, some early warnings came before the legal framework that divided the Colorado among the seven states and Mexico.
John Wesley Powell famously voiced concerns in 1893, some 24 years after his expedition down the river in the Grand Canyon, when he told the attendees at the International Irrigation Congress in Los Angeles: “I tell you, gentlemen, you are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights, for there is not sufficient water to supply these lands.”
Under the 1922 Colorado River Compact and subsequent agreements, the river has long been severely overallocated. As University of Arizona law professor Robert Glennon has succinctly put it, “there are more water rights than there is water.”
So much has been diverted that most of the river’s delta in Mexico was transformed decades ago into stretches of dry riverbed that wind through farmlands and desert in the Mexicali Valley. Only a smattering of natural wetlands remain.
A journey into the heart of a river forever changed by human hands
In his 1986 book “Cadillac Desert,” Marc Reisner wrote that Hoover Dam “rose up at the depths of the Depression and carried America’s spirits with it. Its electricity helped produce the ships and planes that won the Second World War, and its water helped grow the food.”
But Reisner wrote that from these hopeful beginnings, “the tale of human intervention in the Colorado River degenerates into a chronicle of hubris and obtuseness” and that people in the river basin — at that time only 20 million — “will probably find themselves facing chronic shortages, if not some kind of catastrophe.”
“One could say that the age of great expectations was inaugurated at Hoover Dam,” Reisner wrote. “And one could say that, amid the salt-encrusted sands of the river’s dried-up delta, we began to founder on the Era of Limits.”
More recently, authors Eric Kuhn and John Fleck wrote in their 2019 book “Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River” that “even absent climate change, we would be in trouble” and that the current problems surrounding the river “are the inevitable result of critical decisions made by water managers and politicians who ignored the science” as early as the 1920s.
Scientific analyses in the 1920s found the Colorado River would be in deficit if dams and canals were built to meet the anticipated demand, Kuhn and Fleck wrote. But the scientists’ warnings were ignored, and that “set in motion decades of decisions that would end in the overuse seen today.”
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They suggested that addressing the river’s deficit will require recognizing that the “over-allocation became embedded in basin rules in very specific ways that remain unresolved” and should be fixed.
Negotiating the post-2026 rules will be challenging for everyone involved, Kuhn and Fleck wrote, and some of the fundamental issues facing negotiators now are similar to those a century ago, including questions of how much water the river will provide in the years ahead, and how the system should be governed amid uncertainty.
The Colorado River Basin needs “a stable and effective governance of the use of the river’s waters under conditions where current demands already exceed the exiting supplies,” Kuhn and Fleck wrote. “Like one hundred years ago, the river’s future is not all dark. Innovation, cooperation, and an expanded reliance on science are now the foundation for basin-wide solutions.”
One effort to restore some of the wetlands and ecosystems in Mexico began last month, as water began flowing into the delta under an agreement between the U.S. and Mexican governments. The water releases in the delta, which will total 35,000 acre-feet between May and October, are intended to nourish vegetation and wildlife at habitat restoration sites where conservation groups have planted cottonwoods and willows.
The influx of water is supposed to mimic a small portion of the floods that once swept across the delta toward the Sea of Cortez. This year’s releases amount to a smaller version of a planned flood that coursed through the delta in 2014. In that “pulse flow,” 105,000 acre-feet of water brought back a flowing river in areas that had been dry since floods in the late 1990s.
The releases in the delta this year, using water previously stored in Lake Mead, amount to just 5 inches of water in the reservoir. Much more of the water that passes through Hoover Dam is pumped to Phoenix, Tucson and Los Angeles, and flows through canals to irrigate farmlands along the river from Parker to Yuma, and across the Coachella, Imperial and Mexicali valleys.
The intake towers on the Arizona side, May 12, 2021, at Hoover Dam, on the Arizona/Nevada border.
The intake towers on the Arizona side, May 12, 2021, at Hoover Dam, on the Arizona/Nevada border.
Low water levels bring risks
If the water were to decline about 125 feet from where it stands, below the elevation of 950 feet, he says, Hoover Dam would lose the ability to generate power.
“That's what we call minimum power pool,” Bernardo says.
If Mead continues to fall further, the dam could still release water down to a level of 895 feet.
“At 895 and below, Hoover Dam is unable to pass water by any conventional means. So you would essentially have to pump it out of Lake Mead. That's what we call dead pool,” Bernardo says. “And at dead pool, Lake Mead still has 2.5 million acre-feet in storage, but there's just no way to get it out.”
If the lake declines that much, only the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which supplies Las Vegas, has an intake deep enough to continue pumping water.
A view of the 30-foot diameter penstock (bottom) from the penstock access room on the Arizona side, May 11, 2021, at Hoover Dam, on the Arizona/Nevada border.
A view of the 30-foot diameter penstock (bottom) from the penstock access room on the Arizona side, May 11, 2021, at Hoover Dam, on the Arizona/Nevada border.
The risks of Mead falling to such lows gave impetus to the last round of negotiations, which led to the 2019 signing of the Drought Contingency Plan at Hoover Dam.
The river would have been in a shortage already years ago if the states and Mexico hadn’t made concerted efforts to prop up Lake Mead’s levels, Bernardo says, and those steps included various conservation programs that have yielded 4 million acre-feet over the past 15 years, representing about 50 feet of water in the lake.
But with the unrelenting dry years, he says, “we knew that we couldn't postpone a shortage forever.”
Mike Bernardo, of the federal Bureau of Reclamation, on the ramp at Hoover Dam on May 11, 2021.
He reiterates that the shortage measures, including the mandatory cutbacks, were adopted to reduce risks.
“And although it's scary that this will be the first time we're using them, they were designed by very smart people throughout the Colorado River Basin,” Bernardo says. “And let's hope that they work the way that they were designed to work.”
If the situation continues to worsen, he says, everyone involved in managing the river’s water will get together again, as stipulated in the 2019 agreements, to take steps to protect the reservoirs. With about 40 million people relying on water from the Colorado and its tributaries, he says, “all of us as water managers have a responsibility to all of those that are in the basin.”
By mid-June, Lake Mead is set to decline to its lowest levels on record. Hoover Dam will soon hold the smallest amount of water since it was filled in the 1930s. The next few years may show how much water use needs to decrease to rebalance the river and reduce the risk that Hoover Dam might one day fall silent.
Follow reporter Ian James on Twitter: @ByIanJames.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ho ... 16884.html
Ian James, Arizona Republic
Sun, June 6, 2021, 2:20 PM
BOULDER CITY, Nevada — Hoover Dam towers more than 700 feet above Black Canyon on the Arizona-Nevada state line, holding back the waters of the Colorado River. On top of the dam, where visitors peer down the graceful white arc of its face, one of its art deco-style towers is adorned with a work of art that memorializes the purposes of the dam.
In five relief sculptures by Oskar Hansen, muscular men are shown gripping a boat’s wheel, harvesting an armful of wheat, standing beside cascading water and lifting a heavy weight overhead. With the concrete figures are words that encapsulate why the dam was built, as laid out in a 1928 law: FLOOD CONTROL, NAVIGATION, IRRIGATION, WATER STORAGE and POWER.
Eighty-six years after its completion in 1935, the infrastructure at Hoover Dam continues doing what it was designed to do: holding water and sending it coursing through intake tunnels, spinning turbines and generating electricity. But the rules for managing the river and dividing up its water — which were laid down nearly a century ago starting with the 1922 Colorado River Compact and which have repeatedly been tweaked — are now facing the greatest strains since the dam was built.
The effects of years of severe drought and temperatures pushed higher by climate change are strikingly visible along Lake Mead’s retreating shorelines near Las Vegas, where the growing “bathtub ring” of whitish minerals coats the rocky desert slopes.
Since 2000, the water level in Lake Mead, which is the reservoir formed by Hoover Dam and holds the title of the largest reservoir in the country, has dropped about 140 feet. It is now just 37% full, headed for a first-ever official shortage and sinking toward its lowest levels since it was filled.
One of the West's driest 22-year periods in centuries is colliding with the river's chronic overuse. As the reservoir falls toward record lows, its decline threatens the water supplies of cities and farmlands, and reveals how the system of managing water in the desert Southwest faces growing risks.
Hoover Dam and Lake Mead photographed from the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge on May 10, 2021. A high-water mark or "bathtub ring" is visible on the shoreline.
Water levels expected to fall below federal threshold this summer
Mike Bernardo of the federal Bureau of Reclamation leads a team of engineers and hydrologists who plan water releases from Hoover Dam, as well as Davis and Parker dams downstream, sending flows that travel through pipelines and canals to Phoenix, Los Angeles and farmlands in the U.S. and Mexico that produce crops such as hay, cotton, grapes and lettuce.
Bernardo’s team also sets power generation goals and produces a monthly report with the latest projections of how reservoir levels will likely change over the next 24 months.
Lately, each month’s report has brought worsening numbers.
Predicted water-level declines have grown as estimates of inflows into Lake Powell, the upstream reservoir, have shrunk due to extremely parched conditions across the upper watershed in the Rocky Mountains, where much of the river’s flow originates as melting snow.
“Unfortunately, due to how dry things have been,” Bernardo says, “what we're seeing is Lake Powell's elevations are dropping.”
And that will mean less water flowing into Lake Mead for the rest of the year. The past 12 months have been among the driest on record across the Colorado River Basin. Inflows into Lake Powell from April through July are estimated to be just 26% of the long-term average, and that’s leading to rapid declines in both Powell and Mead, the two largest pieces of the river's water-storage system.
The warm, dry conditions over the past two years have baked the watershed’s soils to such an extent, Bernardo says, that “when the snowmelt starts to run off, it just gets sucked up into the ground like a sponge.”
But the demands for water downstream from Hoover Dam continue. And with the Southwest’s farmlands in peak irrigation season through June, Bernardo says, Lake Mead’s surface is dropping about 1 foot each week.
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Mike Bernardo of the federal Bureau of Reclamation, at Hoover Dam in May 2021.
Mike Bernardo of the federal Bureau of Reclamation, at Hoover Dam in May 2021.
The reservoir has declined more than 16 feet over the past year and is forecast to fall about 9 feet more by the end of this year.
The latest projections show that by the end of 2021, Lake Mead will decline below an elevation of 1,066 feet, far below the threshold — 1,075 feet — for the federal government to declare a shortage. That’s expected to happen in August, triggering the largest water cuts to date next year for Arizona, Nevada and Mexico.
Even larger cutbacks could come in 2023 if the reservoir continues to decline as projected over the next year into a more severe “Tier 2” shortage.
Lake Mead's downward spiral is being driven largely by the dire situation upstream at Lake Powell, which has declined to 34% of full capacity.
“We need three to four consecutive years of above-average inflow, snowpack runoff and inflow into Lake Powell, to refill these reservoirs,” Bernardo says. “So that's what we're hoping for.”
The Colorado River naturally cycles through wet and dry periods. But over the past 22 years, the watershed has had 17 dry years, Bernardo says, and only 5 years with above-average or wet conditions.
With climate change, hotter temperatures have been evaporating more moisture off the landscape and leaving less flowing in the river and its tributaries. Scientists describe it as a “megadrought” and one that, unlike the long droughts of the past, is being amplified by carbon pollution and the heating of the planet.
One of the unknowns facing the officials who manage Colorado River water is just how severely the reservoirs could be affected by climate-driven “aridification” in the years to come. But some scientists have estimated the river could lose roughly one-fourth of its flow by 2050 as temperatures continue to rise, and that for each additional 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F) of warming, the average flow is likely to drop by about 9%.
“With the warmer temperatures,” Bernardo says, “not only do we see things melt off quicker but you have that rising snow line, which creates less inflow.”
The Overton Arm of Lake Mead at Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada. The reservoir has declined dramatically since 2000.
The Overton Arm of Lake Mead at Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada. The reservoir has declined dramatically since 2000.
The declines in the reservoirs have accelerated over the past two years.
In 2019, representatives of Arizona, Nevada and California agreed under a deal called the Drought Contingency Plan to share in water reductions through 2026 to reduce the risks of Lake Mead falling to critically low levels. The agreement calls for progressively larger cutbacks if Lake Mead continues to drop below lower trigger points in the coming years.
If the reservoir drops below 1,045 feet, California would start to take cuts. And Mexico is already contributing by leaving some water in Lake Mead.
“These mechanisms have been put into place to protect these reservoir elevations,” Bernardo says.
While the latest agreement is intended as a temporary stopgap measure, officials from the seven states that depend on the river are preparing to negotiate new rules for managing shortages after 2026. And those talks promise to be tougher.
In the meantime, Bernardo says, the bureau's responsibilities in managing the dams and water deliveries remain the same. And that includes incorporating the latest science and models, and providing up-to-date information to representatives of the states, water districts, tribes and other entities along the river, Bernardo says, “to communicate what's going on and what we're seeing, so everyone can act proactively.”
“When you have a river system like this, a complex reservoir and river system especially, that is experiencing the hydrology that we've been seeing, and such a quick decline in the Upper Basin over these last two years, transparency and communication is key,” Bernardo says.
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Bernardo is 35 and has worked for the Bureau of Reclamation for nearly a decade, including the last two years as river operations manager. A mechanical engineer who grew up in New Jersey, he usually works with his staff at the agency’s office in Boulder City, Nevada, but he also regularly drives out to visit the dam, sometimes to lead special tours.
Whenever he rounds the curve in the canyon and sees the dam, Bernardo says, he feels awestruck and “the hair still sticks up on my arms.”
“It never gets old,” he says. “I’m wowed by the engineering marvel.”
Part of that comes from knowing the history of all that went into the dam’s design and construction during the Great Depression, from the hand-drawn blueprints to the blasting with dynamite, the railroad that carried supplies, and the massive amounts of concrete that were poured in, creating a dam that is 660 feet thick at its base — nearly as thick between the reservoir and the downstream side as it is tall. (According to the Bureau of Reclamation, Hoover Dam contains enough concrete to build a sidewalk 4-feet wide around the entire Earth at the equator.)
Whenever he visits the dam, Bernardo says, its historical significance is also inescapable: how it controlled the Colorado’s floods, opened up arid lands for farming and fed the rise of cities across the Southwest. As he describes it, the dam “helped nourish our nation” and helped the West thrive.
“We like to show it off,” he says.
With higher lake levels, Hoover Dam's normal capacity is 2,074 megawatts, Bernardo explains, generating enough power per year to supply approximately 450,000 average households. But at today’s lake level, the dam’s capacity has decreased about 25% to 1,567 megawatts, and it’s generating enough power for roughly 350,000 homes.
With every foot the lake declines, about 6 megawatts of power-generating capacity is lost.
The lowest level at which Hoover could produce power is about 950 feet, with an expected capacity of 650 megawatts. If the lake were to fall below that point — a scenario the existing rules are geared toward avoiding — the dam would no longer be able to generate power.
The generator/turbine gallery on the Arizona side, May 11, 2021, at Hoover Dam, on the Arizona/Nevada border.
The generator/turbine gallery on the Arizona side, May 11, 2021, at Hoover Dam, on the Arizona/Nevada border.
As the reservoir continues to decline, releasing the same amount of water yields a bigger drop in lake level.
“That's one of the concerning pieces,” Bernardo says. “The reservoir is shaped, we call it a teacup, but more like a martini glass. And the lower the elevation goes, the faster the rate of decline.”
That dynamic also affects how much the planned water cuts can help Mead’s level. Under a first-tier shortage next year, for example, Arizona, Nevada and Mexico are preparing for cuts totaling 613,000 acre-feet, which Bernardo says is equivalent to 7-8 feet of elevation in Lake Mead.
If the reservoir were to drop through lower shortage levels to below 1,025 feet, the total cuts among the three states and Mexico would add up to more than 1.3 million acre-feet. That amount, Bernardo says, would equal nearly 20 feet conserved in Lake Mead at those low levels.
When representatives of California, Arizona and Nevada were negotiating the deal, they decided on 1,025 feet as a threshold to avoid, and one they thought the lake would be unlikely to reach. The agreement also includes a backup provision. If the two-year projections show Mead is likely to decline below 1,030 feet, the agreement says the states and the Interior secretary “shall consult and determine what additional measures will be taken.”
The government’s latest five-year projections, using an approach that considers the river’s lower flows over the past three decades, estimates a 25% chance of Lake Mead declining below 1,025 feet in 2025.
Much could change, though, with a snowy winter in the mountains.
“We hope and we feel very strongly that the measures that have been put into place should slow down the decline,” Bernardo says. “Now, if it's enough to make it recover, your guess is as good as mine, because the hydrology has been so bad.”
But if the river basin gets a wet year with average flows, Bernardo says, the cutbacks in the existing plan “will buy us time to get to the next year, in hopes to get a better water year.”
“And I think that's what the system is designed to do,” he says.
An ‘Era of Limits’
The outlook for the Colorado River has grown increasingly dire over the past several years. In one study, scientists found that about half the trend of decreasing runoff in the Upper Colorado River Basin since 2000 was due to unprecedented warming.
Other researchers warned in a report this year that an “incremental approach to adaptation” is unlikely to be enough in the future. They pointed out that flows from 2000 through 2018 were about 18% less than the 20th century average and said the downward trend will likely continue as temperatures rise with climate change.
Worries about overusing the river predate the current dry spell. In fact, some early warnings came before the legal framework that divided the Colorado among the seven states and Mexico.
John Wesley Powell famously voiced concerns in 1893, some 24 years after his expedition down the river in the Grand Canyon, when he told the attendees at the International Irrigation Congress in Los Angeles: “I tell you, gentlemen, you are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights, for there is not sufficient water to supply these lands.”
Under the 1922 Colorado River Compact and subsequent agreements, the river has long been severely overallocated. As University of Arizona law professor Robert Glennon has succinctly put it, “there are more water rights than there is water.”
So much has been diverted that most of the river’s delta in Mexico was transformed decades ago into stretches of dry riverbed that wind through farmlands and desert in the Mexicali Valley. Only a smattering of natural wetlands remain.
A journey into the heart of a river forever changed by human hands
In his 1986 book “Cadillac Desert,” Marc Reisner wrote that Hoover Dam “rose up at the depths of the Depression and carried America’s spirits with it. Its electricity helped produce the ships and planes that won the Second World War, and its water helped grow the food.”
But Reisner wrote that from these hopeful beginnings, “the tale of human intervention in the Colorado River degenerates into a chronicle of hubris and obtuseness” and that people in the river basin — at that time only 20 million — “will probably find themselves facing chronic shortages, if not some kind of catastrophe.”
“One could say that the age of great expectations was inaugurated at Hoover Dam,” Reisner wrote. “And one could say that, amid the salt-encrusted sands of the river’s dried-up delta, we began to founder on the Era of Limits.”
More recently, authors Eric Kuhn and John Fleck wrote in their 2019 book “Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River” that “even absent climate change, we would be in trouble” and that the current problems surrounding the river “are the inevitable result of critical decisions made by water managers and politicians who ignored the science” as early as the 1920s.
Scientific analyses in the 1920s found the Colorado River would be in deficit if dams and canals were built to meet the anticipated demand, Kuhn and Fleck wrote. But the scientists’ warnings were ignored, and that “set in motion decades of decisions that would end in the overuse seen today.”
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They suggested that addressing the river’s deficit will require recognizing that the “over-allocation became embedded in basin rules in very specific ways that remain unresolved” and should be fixed.
Negotiating the post-2026 rules will be challenging for everyone involved, Kuhn and Fleck wrote, and some of the fundamental issues facing negotiators now are similar to those a century ago, including questions of how much water the river will provide in the years ahead, and how the system should be governed amid uncertainty.
The Colorado River Basin needs “a stable and effective governance of the use of the river’s waters under conditions where current demands already exceed the exiting supplies,” Kuhn and Fleck wrote. “Like one hundred years ago, the river’s future is not all dark. Innovation, cooperation, and an expanded reliance on science are now the foundation for basin-wide solutions.”
One effort to restore some of the wetlands and ecosystems in Mexico began last month, as water began flowing into the delta under an agreement between the U.S. and Mexican governments. The water releases in the delta, which will total 35,000 acre-feet between May and October, are intended to nourish vegetation and wildlife at habitat restoration sites where conservation groups have planted cottonwoods and willows.
The influx of water is supposed to mimic a small portion of the floods that once swept across the delta toward the Sea of Cortez. This year’s releases amount to a smaller version of a planned flood that coursed through the delta in 2014. In that “pulse flow,” 105,000 acre-feet of water brought back a flowing river in areas that had been dry since floods in the late 1990s.
The releases in the delta this year, using water previously stored in Lake Mead, amount to just 5 inches of water in the reservoir. Much more of the water that passes through Hoover Dam is pumped to Phoenix, Tucson and Los Angeles, and flows through canals to irrigate farmlands along the river from Parker to Yuma, and across the Coachella, Imperial and Mexicali valleys.
The intake towers on the Arizona side, May 12, 2021, at Hoover Dam, on the Arizona/Nevada border.
The intake towers on the Arizona side, May 12, 2021, at Hoover Dam, on the Arizona/Nevada border.
Low water levels bring risks
If the water were to decline about 125 feet from where it stands, below the elevation of 950 feet, he says, Hoover Dam would lose the ability to generate power.
“That's what we call minimum power pool,” Bernardo says.
If Mead continues to fall further, the dam could still release water down to a level of 895 feet.
“At 895 and below, Hoover Dam is unable to pass water by any conventional means. So you would essentially have to pump it out of Lake Mead. That's what we call dead pool,” Bernardo says. “And at dead pool, Lake Mead still has 2.5 million acre-feet in storage, but there's just no way to get it out.”
If the lake declines that much, only the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which supplies Las Vegas, has an intake deep enough to continue pumping water.
A view of the 30-foot diameter penstock (bottom) from the penstock access room on the Arizona side, May 11, 2021, at Hoover Dam, on the Arizona/Nevada border.
A view of the 30-foot diameter penstock (bottom) from the penstock access room on the Arizona side, May 11, 2021, at Hoover Dam, on the Arizona/Nevada border.
The risks of Mead falling to such lows gave impetus to the last round of negotiations, which led to the 2019 signing of the Drought Contingency Plan at Hoover Dam.
The river would have been in a shortage already years ago if the states and Mexico hadn’t made concerted efforts to prop up Lake Mead’s levels, Bernardo says, and those steps included various conservation programs that have yielded 4 million acre-feet over the past 15 years, representing about 50 feet of water in the lake.
But with the unrelenting dry years, he says, “we knew that we couldn't postpone a shortage forever.”
Mike Bernardo, of the federal Bureau of Reclamation, on the ramp at Hoover Dam on May 11, 2021.
He reiterates that the shortage measures, including the mandatory cutbacks, were adopted to reduce risks.
“And although it's scary that this will be the first time we're using them, they were designed by very smart people throughout the Colorado River Basin,” Bernardo says. “And let's hope that they work the way that they were designed to work.”
If the situation continues to worsen, he says, everyone involved in managing the river’s water will get together again, as stipulated in the 2019 agreements, to take steps to protect the reservoirs. With about 40 million people relying on water from the Colorado and its tributaries, he says, “all of us as water managers have a responsibility to all of those that are in the basin.”
By mid-June, Lake Mead is set to decline to its lowest levels on record. Hoover Dam will soon hold the smallest amount of water since it was filled in the 1930s. The next few years may show how much water use needs to decrease to rebalance the river and reduce the risk that Hoover Dam might one day fall silent.
Follow reporter Ian James on Twitter: @ByIanJames.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ho ... 16884.html
This Inspiring Film Could Change The World
Hi Karim,
Four years ago, my friend and fellow filmmaker Rob Herring called me with a fire in his heart. He had decided to make it his mission to educate people about sustainability and what we humans can do to create a lasting future for our children and grandchildren.
Rob was in the middle of filming a new documentary on the topic and was looking for guidance on how to turn it into something that could have a huge impact. I told him that he had me at "a lasting future for our children."
After a ton of hard work (and plenty of serendipity), this remarkable film called The Need To GROW is airing online for FREE...and I have a feeling it might just change the world.
If you watch the trailer below, I think you'll agree
Watch the trailer here https://grow.foodrevolution.org/?orid=127162&opid=314
The Need To GROW is a deeply moving, award-winning documentary that will open your eyes to huge issues in our food system that you may not know about. It will leave you feeling informed and inspired about what you can do to impact the health of your loved ones (and the health of our planet) for the better.
You'll recognize the narrator too! The environmentalist and actress Rosario Dawson gives voice to the film's important message: we must learn how to sustainably grow food for future generations.
I dare you not to get emotional while watching this film...
Click here to watch it for free https://grow.foodrevolution.org/?orid=127162&opid=314
Stay curious,
Nick Polizzi
Host of Proven: Healing Breakthroughs Backed By Science
& Founder of The Sacred Science
Hi Karim,
Four years ago, my friend and fellow filmmaker Rob Herring called me with a fire in his heart. He had decided to make it his mission to educate people about sustainability and what we humans can do to create a lasting future for our children and grandchildren.
Rob was in the middle of filming a new documentary on the topic and was looking for guidance on how to turn it into something that could have a huge impact. I told him that he had me at "a lasting future for our children."
After a ton of hard work (and plenty of serendipity), this remarkable film called The Need To GROW is airing online for FREE...and I have a feeling it might just change the world.
If you watch the trailer below, I think you'll agree
Watch the trailer here https://grow.foodrevolution.org/?orid=127162&opid=314
The Need To GROW is a deeply moving, award-winning documentary that will open your eyes to huge issues in our food system that you may not know about. It will leave you feeling informed and inspired about what you can do to impact the health of your loved ones (and the health of our planet) for the better.
You'll recognize the narrator too! The environmentalist and actress Rosario Dawson gives voice to the film's important message: we must learn how to sustainably grow food for future generations.
I dare you not to get emotional while watching this film...
Click here to watch it for free https://grow.foodrevolution.org/?orid=127162&opid=314
Stay curious,
Nick Polizzi
Host of Proven: Healing Breakthroughs Backed By Science
& Founder of The Sacred Science
People who live past 100 usually do one thing...
Hi Karim,
There’s a common activity among cultures where people who routinely live past 100... Research shows almost ALL of them grow vegetables!
And it makes sense. Because more and more studies are showing that gardening can reduce stress, anger, fatigue, depression, and anxiety... all of which can help increase both a person’s life span and health span.
Not to mention that you can grow the healthiest, freshest, most nutrient-packed, and delicious superfoods on the planet!
That’s why my good friend and gardening expert, Stacey Murphy, is teaming up with 16 visionary gardeners and superfood experts (including yours truly!) for the Superfood Garden Summit.
So you can learn to grow fresh, organic food right at home and enjoy a higher quality of life... Imagine all that nutrient-rich, supercharged food, flavor, and FUN!
The Superfood Garden Summit is the gardening event of the summer. And it’s a totally free and LIVE event, airing from July 21-24.
>> Click here to claim your spot at the Superfood Garden Summit.
https://superfoodgardensummit.com/?orid=13188&opid=291
Yours for homegrown health,
Ocean Robbins
P.S. This will be a LIVE, interactive event from July 21-24. Come get your questions answered and chat with fellow gardeners around the world. Plus, enter to win prizes that will help you get the most from your garden! (And if you can’t join in live, don’t worry; there will also be 24-hour replays).
Reserve your spot today.
Hi Karim,
There’s a common activity among cultures where people who routinely live past 100... Research shows almost ALL of them grow vegetables!
And it makes sense. Because more and more studies are showing that gardening can reduce stress, anger, fatigue, depression, and anxiety... all of which can help increase both a person’s life span and health span.
Not to mention that you can grow the healthiest, freshest, most nutrient-packed, and delicious superfoods on the planet!
That’s why my good friend and gardening expert, Stacey Murphy, is teaming up with 16 visionary gardeners and superfood experts (including yours truly!) for the Superfood Garden Summit.
So you can learn to grow fresh, organic food right at home and enjoy a higher quality of life... Imagine all that nutrient-rich, supercharged food, flavor, and FUN!
The Superfood Garden Summit is the gardening event of the summer. And it’s a totally free and LIVE event, airing from July 21-24.
>> Click here to claim your spot at the Superfood Garden Summit.
https://superfoodgardensummit.com/?orid=13188&opid=291
Yours for homegrown health,
Ocean Robbins
P.S. This will be a LIVE, interactive event from July 21-24. Come get your questions answered and chat with fellow gardeners around the world. Plus, enter to win prizes that will help you get the most from your garden! (And if you can’t join in live, don’t worry; there will also be 24-hour replays).
Reserve your spot today.
Drought Hits the Southwest, and New Mexico’s Canals Run Dry
Acequias, the fabled irrigation ditches that are a cornerstone of New Mexican culture, have endured centuries of challenges. Can they survive the Southwest’s megadrought?
LEDOUX, N.M. — Nestled in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the remote village of Ledoux has for more than a century relied on a network of irrigation ditches to water its crops. The outpost’s acequias, as New Mexico’s fabled canals are known, are replenished annually by snowmelt and rains. But with the Southwest locked in an unrelenting drought, they have begun to run dry.
“I never thought I’d witness such a crash in our water sources,” said Harold Trujillo, 71, a farmer in Ledoux who has seen his production of hay collapse to about 300 bales a year from 6,000. “I look at the mountains around us and ask: ‘Where’s the snow? Where are the rains?’”
Acequias — pronounced ah-SEH-kee-ahs — borrow their name from the Arabic term for water conduit, al-sāqiya. They are celebrated in song, books and verse, and they have endured in the state for centuries. Spanish colonists in New Mexico began digging the canals in the 1600s, building on water harvesting techniques honed by the Pueblo Indians.
Even then, the acequia reflected the blending of cultural traditions. Muslims introduced acequias in Spain after invading the Iberian Peninsula in the eighth century, using gravity to manage irrigation flows. Acequias eventually spread around the Spanish-speaking world.
Making subsistence farming feasible in arid lands, New Mexico’s communally managed acequias persisted through uprisings, epidemics and wars of territorial conquest, preserving a form of small-scale democratic governance that took root before the United States existed as a country.
But in a sign of how climate change has begun to upend farming traditions across the Southwest, the megadrought afflicting New Mexico and neighboring states may amount to the acequias’ biggest challenge yet.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/13/us/a ... iversified
Acequias, the fabled irrigation ditches that are a cornerstone of New Mexican culture, have endured centuries of challenges. Can they survive the Southwest’s megadrought?
LEDOUX, N.M. — Nestled in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the remote village of Ledoux has for more than a century relied on a network of irrigation ditches to water its crops. The outpost’s acequias, as New Mexico’s fabled canals are known, are replenished annually by snowmelt and rains. But with the Southwest locked in an unrelenting drought, they have begun to run dry.
“I never thought I’d witness such a crash in our water sources,” said Harold Trujillo, 71, a farmer in Ledoux who has seen his production of hay collapse to about 300 bales a year from 6,000. “I look at the mountains around us and ask: ‘Where’s the snow? Where are the rains?’”
Acequias — pronounced ah-SEH-kee-ahs — borrow their name from the Arabic term for water conduit, al-sāqiya. They are celebrated in song, books and verse, and they have endured in the state for centuries. Spanish colonists in New Mexico began digging the canals in the 1600s, building on water harvesting techniques honed by the Pueblo Indians.
Even then, the acequia reflected the blending of cultural traditions. Muslims introduced acequias in Spain after invading the Iberian Peninsula in the eighth century, using gravity to manage irrigation flows. Acequias eventually spread around the Spanish-speaking world.
Making subsistence farming feasible in arid lands, New Mexico’s communally managed acequias persisted through uprisings, epidemics and wars of territorial conquest, preserving a form of small-scale democratic governance that took root before the United States existed as a country.
But in a sign of how climate change has begun to upend farming traditions across the Southwest, the megadrought afflicting New Mexico and neighboring states may amount to the acequias’ biggest challenge yet.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/13/us/a ... iversified
Sustainable food production aims to meet growing demand
Agriculture is one of the world's largest industries. For years it has been pivotal in alleviating poverty, improving incomes, and providing food security for the marginalised in society. With the world’s population multiplying, the demand for agricultural commodities has risen tremendously in the past few decades.
In several parts of the world, food production is significantly impacted by climatic changes such as the increased frequency of storms, droughts, and other extreme weather events, thereby altering regional growing conditions and making them less predictable. Several new technologies have been identified to overcome such issues that can transform the entire food chain, from production and processing to consumption and waste management.
Urban agriculture, commonly known as urban farming, refers to growing plants and rearing animals that produce food within a city or town. Because of technological upgrades, humans are now able to grow food in places where it was previously difficult or nearly impossible. Urban farms can be either traditional small community gardens or modern indoor vertical farms.
Nabeela Lakhani was one of ten farmer-entrepreneurs in the pilot programme of Square Roots Grow, an urban farming accelerator in New York City. For 12 months, each farmer was given a 320-square-foot steel shipping container where they controlled the climate of their farm. Under pink LED lights, they grew GMO-free greens all year round. The crops thriving inside the 45-foot long metal boxes were fed hydroponically, using a liquid nutrient solution instead of soil. Being trained in artificial lighting, water chemistry, and nutrient balance, these farmers harvested 15 to 20 pounds of produce each week.
“One of the biggest problems I have with the current industrial food system is that it has stripped food down to a profit-making commodity, driven by money and power rather than nourishment,” said Nabeela.
“I hope that this technology will usher in a new age in which people will increasingly gravitate toward hyper-local, pesticide-free crops. As all we are looking for - is food that we can trust.”
Urban agriculture is experiencing burgeoning popularity, with gardens springing up in many cities in Australia, Canada, the United States, the UK, France, and New Zealand.
Food insecurity is especially rife in high altitude mountainous regions and has a serious bearing on the health of local residents. Because of prolonged winters and limited growing seasons, their basic nutritional requirements remain unfulfilled, thus resulting in malnutrition among women and children. In Tajikistan, 18 per cent of children under the age of five are stunted( low height-for-weight), and 6 per cent have a low wasting ratio (low weight-for-height). Facing high levels of undernutrition, it is one of the focus countries for the ‘Feed the Future’ global hunger and food security initiative. To further combat these issues, the Aga Khan Foundation has also demonstrated the construction of greenhouses that allow people to grow vegetables locally, fulfil basic nutritional requirements, and earn some extra income.
Last year, an emergency project was planned to reduce Tajikistan's vulnerability to Covid-19-related food insecurity. This project aimed to benefit an estimated 12,000 people directly and about 80,000 indirectly. It focused on increasing agriculture production and output by providing critical irrigation infrastructure and improved access to quality agricultural inputs such as seeds and fertilisers. The Aga Khan Foundation, with the support of the Government of Switzerland, has successfully launched the project in 12 districts of the Khatlon region, Gorno Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast, Sughd region, and Rasht Valley of Tajikistan.
As the world population grows toward nearly 10 billion people in 2050, demand for food is expected to grow by more than 50 per cent. More effective and responsible production practices like advanced farming operations, conscious supply chains, and new market opportunities will be needed to meet this growing demand in the years ahead. As we rapidly reach the limits of what our natural environment can endure, new technologies like vertical farming, precision farming, and many others will hopefully build a better future for humankind.
https://the.ismaili/global/sustainable- ... ing-demand
Agriculture is one of the world's largest industries. For years it has been pivotal in alleviating poverty, improving incomes, and providing food security for the marginalised in society. With the world’s population multiplying, the demand for agricultural commodities has risen tremendously in the past few decades.
In several parts of the world, food production is significantly impacted by climatic changes such as the increased frequency of storms, droughts, and other extreme weather events, thereby altering regional growing conditions and making them less predictable. Several new technologies have been identified to overcome such issues that can transform the entire food chain, from production and processing to consumption and waste management.
Urban agriculture, commonly known as urban farming, refers to growing plants and rearing animals that produce food within a city or town. Because of technological upgrades, humans are now able to grow food in places where it was previously difficult or nearly impossible. Urban farms can be either traditional small community gardens or modern indoor vertical farms.
Nabeela Lakhani was one of ten farmer-entrepreneurs in the pilot programme of Square Roots Grow, an urban farming accelerator in New York City. For 12 months, each farmer was given a 320-square-foot steel shipping container where they controlled the climate of their farm. Under pink LED lights, they grew GMO-free greens all year round. The crops thriving inside the 45-foot long metal boxes were fed hydroponically, using a liquid nutrient solution instead of soil. Being trained in artificial lighting, water chemistry, and nutrient balance, these farmers harvested 15 to 20 pounds of produce each week.
“One of the biggest problems I have with the current industrial food system is that it has stripped food down to a profit-making commodity, driven by money and power rather than nourishment,” said Nabeela.
“I hope that this technology will usher in a new age in which people will increasingly gravitate toward hyper-local, pesticide-free crops. As all we are looking for - is food that we can trust.”
Urban agriculture is experiencing burgeoning popularity, with gardens springing up in many cities in Australia, Canada, the United States, the UK, France, and New Zealand.
Food insecurity is especially rife in high altitude mountainous regions and has a serious bearing on the health of local residents. Because of prolonged winters and limited growing seasons, their basic nutritional requirements remain unfulfilled, thus resulting in malnutrition among women and children. In Tajikistan, 18 per cent of children under the age of five are stunted( low height-for-weight), and 6 per cent have a low wasting ratio (low weight-for-height). Facing high levels of undernutrition, it is one of the focus countries for the ‘Feed the Future’ global hunger and food security initiative. To further combat these issues, the Aga Khan Foundation has also demonstrated the construction of greenhouses that allow people to grow vegetables locally, fulfil basic nutritional requirements, and earn some extra income.
Last year, an emergency project was planned to reduce Tajikistan's vulnerability to Covid-19-related food insecurity. This project aimed to benefit an estimated 12,000 people directly and about 80,000 indirectly. It focused on increasing agriculture production and output by providing critical irrigation infrastructure and improved access to quality agricultural inputs such as seeds and fertilisers. The Aga Khan Foundation, with the support of the Government of Switzerland, has successfully launched the project in 12 districts of the Khatlon region, Gorno Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast, Sughd region, and Rasht Valley of Tajikistan.
As the world population grows toward nearly 10 billion people in 2050, demand for food is expected to grow by more than 50 per cent. More effective and responsible production practices like advanced farming operations, conscious supply chains, and new market opportunities will be needed to meet this growing demand in the years ahead. As we rapidly reach the limits of what our natural environment can endure, new technologies like vertical farming, precision farming, and many others will hopefully build a better future for humankind.
https://the.ismaili/global/sustainable- ... ing-demand
Unprecedented levels of dam building and water extraction by nations on great rivers are leaving countries further downstream increasingly thirsty, increasing the risk of conflicts.
Speaking to me via Zoom from his flat in Amsterdam, Ali al-Sadr pauses to take a sip from a clear glass of water. The irony dawning on him, he lets out a laugh. "Before I left Iraq, I struggled every day to find clean drinking water." Three years earlier, al-Sadr had joined protests in the streets of his native Basra, demanding the authorities address the city's growing water crisis.
"Before the war, Basra was a beautiful place," adds the 29-year-old. "They used to call us the Venice of the East." Bordered on one side by the Shatt al-Arab River, the city is skewered by a network of freshwater canals. al-Sadr, a dockhand, once loved working alongside them. "But by the time I left, they were pumping raw sewage into the waterways. We couldn't wash, the smell [of the river] gave me migraines and, when I finally fell sick, I spent four days in bed." In the summer of 2018, tainted water sent 120,000 Basrans to the city's hospitals – and, when police opened fire on those who protested, al Sadr was lucky to escape with his life. "Within a month I packed my bags and left for Europe," he says.
Around the world, stories like al Sadr's are becoming far too common. As much as a quarter of the world's population now faces severe water scarcity at least one month out of the year and – as in al-Sadr's case – it is leading many to seek a more secure life in other countries. "If there is no water, people will start to move," says Kitty van der Heijden, chief of international cooperation at the Netherlands' foreign ministry and an expert in hydropolitics. Water scarcity affects roughly 40% of the world's population and, according to predictions by the United Nations and the World Bank, drought could put up to 700 million people at risk of displacement by 2030. People like van der Heijden are concerned about what that could lead to.
"If there is no water, politicians are going to try and get their hands on it and they might start to fight over it," she says.
Over the course of the 20th Century, global water use grew at more than twice the rate of population increase. Today, this dissonance is leading many cities – from Rome to Cape Town, Chennai to Lima – to ration water. Water crises have been ranked in the top five of the World Economic Forum's Global Risks by Impact list nearly every year since 2012. In 2017, severe droughts contributed to the worst humanitarian crisis since World War Two, when 20 million people across Africa and the Middle East were forced to leave their homes due to the accompanying food shortages and conflicts that erupted.
Peter Gleick, head of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute, has spent the last three decades studying the link between water scarcity, conflict and migration and believes that water conflict is on the rise. "With very rare exceptions, no one dies of literal thirst," he says. "But more and more people are dying from contaminated water or conflicts over access to water."
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https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2021 ... ewing-wars
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Re: WORLD FOOD AND WATER CRISIS
Famine in waiting
Editorial Published May 19, 2025 Updated about 22 hours ago
FOOD insecurity across the world has reached unprecedented levels, with conflict, economic shocks, and climate extremes pushing millions to the edge of starvation, according to the Global Report on Food Crises.
The situation is most harrowing in Gaza, where the entire population of 2.1m is facing high levels of acute food insecurity. As of March 2024, more than half the population was classified in IPC Phase 4 Emergency levels, while an alarming 50pc faced Catastrophe conditions (IPC Phase 5), the final stage before famine is officially declared.
This is not just a humanitarian failure but a result of deliberate policy and sustained conflict. Gaza’s economy has collapsed under a 17-year blockade and repeated military escalations. By the end of 2024, 75pc of cropland, 57pc of greenhouses, and 68pc of wells had been destroyed. In north Gaza and Gaza governorates, 70pc of the population was surviving under Catastrophe-level conditions, relying almost entirely on inadequate humanitarian aid. Food prices skyrocketed, with wheat flour prices increasing by 3,000pc between February and April 2025.
Efforts at mitigation remain woefully insufficient. Humanitarian access has been severely restricted, with aid trucks entering Gaza far below pre-conflict levels, and the risk of famine remains persistent throughout 2025. The global community must push for an immediate ceasefire and unrestricted humanitarian access.
While Gaza’s plight is the most severe, Pakistan too faces a worrying food security outlook. Although food inflation fell to 0.3pc by December 2024, down from double digits earlier in the year, poverty and unemployment continue to hinder access to food. The 2022 floods left lasting scars, and extreme weather events in 2023 and 2024 further eroded livelihoods, particularly in rural Balochistan, Sindh and KP. These regions also face deteriorating water security, further compounding agricultural losses and pushing subsistence farmers into deeper debt traps.
As of the latest assessments, 11m people in Pakistan remain in IPC Phase 3 Crisis or worse, with 2.2m in Emergency conditions. High levels of acute malnutrition are particularly alarming in Sindh and KP, with a significant number of children born with low birth weight and a large burden of diarrhoea and respiratory infections exacerbating the crisis. Compounding these challenges is the global reduction in humanitarian funding, which has curtailed food assistance programmes.
Immediate policy interventions are needed. The centre and provinces must strengthen social safety nets, ensure nutrition support for mothers and children, and invest in climate-resilient agriculture. Without decisive action, Pakistan risks falling deeper into a chronic cycle of hunger and poverty.
In a world where millions go to bed hungry, and where children’s futures are traded for geopolitical gains, we must ask: how long can humanity endure this?
Published in Dawn, May 19th, 2025
https://www.dawn.com/news/1911926
Editorial Published May 19, 2025 Updated about 22 hours ago
FOOD insecurity across the world has reached unprecedented levels, with conflict, economic shocks, and climate extremes pushing millions to the edge of starvation, according to the Global Report on Food Crises.
The situation is most harrowing in Gaza, where the entire population of 2.1m is facing high levels of acute food insecurity. As of March 2024, more than half the population was classified in IPC Phase 4 Emergency levels, while an alarming 50pc faced Catastrophe conditions (IPC Phase 5), the final stage before famine is officially declared.
This is not just a humanitarian failure but a result of deliberate policy and sustained conflict. Gaza’s economy has collapsed under a 17-year blockade and repeated military escalations. By the end of 2024, 75pc of cropland, 57pc of greenhouses, and 68pc of wells had been destroyed. In north Gaza and Gaza governorates, 70pc of the population was surviving under Catastrophe-level conditions, relying almost entirely on inadequate humanitarian aid. Food prices skyrocketed, with wheat flour prices increasing by 3,000pc between February and April 2025.
Efforts at mitigation remain woefully insufficient. Humanitarian access has been severely restricted, with aid trucks entering Gaza far below pre-conflict levels, and the risk of famine remains persistent throughout 2025. The global community must push for an immediate ceasefire and unrestricted humanitarian access.
While Gaza’s plight is the most severe, Pakistan too faces a worrying food security outlook. Although food inflation fell to 0.3pc by December 2024, down from double digits earlier in the year, poverty and unemployment continue to hinder access to food. The 2022 floods left lasting scars, and extreme weather events in 2023 and 2024 further eroded livelihoods, particularly in rural Balochistan, Sindh and KP. These regions also face deteriorating water security, further compounding agricultural losses and pushing subsistence farmers into deeper debt traps.
As of the latest assessments, 11m people in Pakistan remain in IPC Phase 3 Crisis or worse, with 2.2m in Emergency conditions. High levels of acute malnutrition are particularly alarming in Sindh and KP, with a significant number of children born with low birth weight and a large burden of diarrhoea and respiratory infections exacerbating the crisis. Compounding these challenges is the global reduction in humanitarian funding, which has curtailed food assistance programmes.
Immediate policy interventions are needed. The centre and provinces must strengthen social safety nets, ensure nutrition support for mothers and children, and invest in climate-resilient agriculture. Without decisive action, Pakistan risks falling deeper into a chronic cycle of hunger and poverty.
In a world where millions go to bed hungry, and where children’s futures are traded for geopolitical gains, we must ask: how long can humanity endure this?
Published in Dawn, May 19th, 2025
https://www.dawn.com/news/1911926