natural resources
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The Importance of New York City’s Water Infrastructure
New York City has a magnificent system of water supply. It is an example of farsighted long-term leadership and investment without which the modern city of New York could never have been built.
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Navigating Governments’ Obligations in the Context of Land Investments
How should governments address the concerns of their citizens tied to land investments? And do their legal obligations constrain their options for doing so? These are increasingly complicated, and pressing, questions.
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Watch: Building Solutions for Water Challenges
From aging and leaky pipes to pollution and shrinking aquifers, America’s water infrastructure faces a growing set of challenges. A new video describes how the America’s Water Initiative, a program based at the Columbia Water Center, is trying to address those issues.
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Internships Available at Center on Sustainable Investment
The Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment is accepting applications until March 31 for internship positions for summer 2016. Interns are assigned to one or more projects depending on background and interests; unpaid and paid opportunities are available.
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There’s Plenty of Blame for Flint, Michigan’s Water Crisis
The federal government sets the drinking water standards in America, even though monitoring and administration is delegated to the states. The federal EPA had the authority and responsibility to intervene. The failure in Flint belongs to all of us and it should lead to some hard thinking about the causes of this completely avoidable environmental…
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Fragile States Use Geospatial Data and Maps to Better Manage Natural Resources
Some of the world’s poorest nations have an abundance of natural resources, but also have suffered under recent conflicts. Learning how to manage these resources strategically and sustainably can help accelerate growth and development. A new web-based mapping tool may be able to help them do that.
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Renewed Effort Underway to Better Understand Challenges to Peacebuilding
Lessons learned regarding the management of natural resources in peacebuilding efforts were the focus of several activities recently, including a book launch of the first in a six-volume series, a conference, and curriculum-building workshop.
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For Better or for Worse: A Decade of Global Environmental Performance Trends Examined
The Pilot Trend Environmental Performance Index (Trend EPI) ranks countries on improvement or decline in their environmental performance, over the past decade.
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Emerging Scientists Set Sights on Fixing World’s Problems
In 2002, Christian Webersik spent months on and off in war-torn Somalia, conducting interviews with both the elite and the layperson for his research on the link between armed conflict and natural resources. “You can see how different political sides tried to monopolize natural resources to finance their militia,” says Webersik. His work suggests it…