State of the Planet

News from the Columbia Climate School

Water63

  • The Garden on the Tibibas Plain, Mali: Women’s ag. project takes off

    What follows are excerpts from a report by Severin Oman on a Women’s Community Garden project in Mali, West Africa, sponsored by the Earth Institute Millennium Village Project (MVP) and the Columbia Water Center. The project is located within the Tiby, Mali, Millennium Village cluster.

  • Communities Participate to Lower Arsenic Exposure More Effectively in Bangladesh

    There are more than 30 million people in Bangladesh at risk from arsenic contaminated water, which can cause health problems including thickening and hardening of the hands and feet, skin cancer, bladder cancer, lung cancer, vascular disease leading to gangrene, and diabetes. Columbia University scientists from the Mailman School of Public Health and Lamont-Doherty Earth…

  • The chaal and local groundwater management in India: When progress isn’t progress

    I recently came across an article in the Tehelka blog, which made me want to learn more. It was about a traditional water management system in the Uttarakhand region in northern India that has worked for years, but is being destroyed by funding meant to ‘modernize’ it.

  • The Economist: Special Report on Water, a primer for the water crisis

    The Economist has released a Special Report on Water, dated May 22nd, 2010, written by John Grimond. The 18 page report contains 9 short but substantial articles giving an overview of global water issues.

  • Irrigation project success in Mali

    Columbia Water Center is working in Mali, Africa, as part of its PepsiCo Foundation funded project to improve rural water use and livelihoods. The Mali component of the project aims to develop an effective irrigation system to improve agricultural productivity and food security.

  • Water and Energy – an Integrated Approach

    In the news, electricity and resource use seems to get the most exposure – people are looking at emissions, global warming, and oil and coal dependence.  One thing that is for certain is that electricity use needs to decrease if we are to decreased our dependence on oil, our CO2 emissions, and become a greener…

  • LIMPET: Land Installed Marine Powered Energy Transformer

    I recently posted a piece on the ‘Deep Green’ project to generate electricity from deep ocean currents. Here is another of the ocean-based generation schemes: Land Installed Marine Powered Energy Transformer, or LIMPET.

  • The Water Conflict in Ecuador

    Over the last year, the government has been working on passing a new water bill, the Hydraulic Resources Law, which would, as I understand it, allow the concessions to stand, codify privatization of water rights and centralize decision-making at the state level, possibly further excluding traditional local water-management structures from the process. In the last…

  • Sea-kites harvest the energy of the ocean

    A test site for a process called ‘Deep Green’ will be built off the coast of Northern Ireland in 2011, according to Minesto, a Saab spinoff. Sea kites will fly deep under water, using ocean currents to lift them, while an attached turbine harvests the the kinetic energy and turns it into electricity.

  • The Garden on the Tibibas Plain, Mali: Women’s ag. project takes off

    What follows are excerpts from a report by Severin Oman on a Women’s Community Garden project in Mali, West Africa, sponsored by the Earth Institute Millennium Village Project (MVP) and the Columbia Water Center. The project is located within the Tiby, Mali, Millennium Village cluster.

  • Communities Participate to Lower Arsenic Exposure More Effectively in Bangladesh

    There are more than 30 million people in Bangladesh at risk from arsenic contaminated water, which can cause health problems including thickening and hardening of the hands and feet, skin cancer, bladder cancer, lung cancer, vascular disease leading to gangrene, and diabetes. Columbia University scientists from the Mailman School of Public Health and Lamont-Doherty Earth…

  • The chaal and local groundwater management in India: When progress isn’t progress

    I recently came across an article in the Tehelka blog, which made me want to learn more. It was about a traditional water management system in the Uttarakhand region in northern India that has worked for years, but is being destroyed by funding meant to ‘modernize’ it.

  • The Economist: Special Report on Water, a primer for the water crisis

    The Economist has released a Special Report on Water, dated May 22nd, 2010, written by John Grimond. The 18 page report contains 9 short but substantial articles giving an overview of global water issues.

  • Irrigation project success in Mali

    Columbia Water Center is working in Mali, Africa, as part of its PepsiCo Foundation funded project to improve rural water use and livelihoods. The Mali component of the project aims to develop an effective irrigation system to improve agricultural productivity and food security.

  • Water and Energy – an Integrated Approach

    In the news, electricity and resource use seems to get the most exposure – people are looking at emissions, global warming, and oil and coal dependence.  One thing that is for certain is that electricity use needs to decrease if we are to decreased our dependence on oil, our CO2 emissions, and become a greener…

  • LIMPET: Land Installed Marine Powered Energy Transformer

    I recently posted a piece on the ‘Deep Green’ project to generate electricity from deep ocean currents. Here is another of the ocean-based generation schemes: Land Installed Marine Powered Energy Transformer, or LIMPET.

  • The Water Conflict in Ecuador

    Over the last year, the government has been working on passing a new water bill, the Hydraulic Resources Law, which would, as I understand it, allow the concessions to stand, codify privatization of water rights and centralize decision-making at the state level, possibly further excluding traditional local water-management structures from the process. In the last…

  • Sea-kites harvest the energy of the ocean

    A test site for a process called ‘Deep Green’ will be built off the coast of Northern Ireland in 2011, according to Minesto, a Saab spinoff. Sea kites will fly deep under water, using ocean currents to lift them, while an attached turbine harvests the the kinetic energy and turns it into electricity.