Project

South Asia's Troubled Waters

The majority of India's water sources are polluted. A lack of access to safe water contributes to a fifth of its communicable diseases. Each day in the booming, nuclear-armed nation, diarrhea alone kills more than 1,600 people.

The regional scenario is even more grim given the projected impact of population pressures and global warming—which aggravates the flood and drought cycle of the monsoon, and the melting of Himalayan glaciers that serve as a natural water reservoir used by a billion people. Northern India may run out of groundwater within a decade, leading to a collapse of agriculture in regions like Punjab, the country's "breadbasket." Pakistan is already on the brink of water scarcity. Meanwhile, a rash of environmentally questionable dam building along the nuclear rivals' shared rivers is further stoking geopolitical tension.

From India to Bangladesh and Nepal, this project will explore the role of local innovators and international actors in aggravating or alleviating the region's water crisis. The reporting will take them from the slums of Delhi to parched rural deserts, and from monsoon-ravaged Bangladesh to the Himalayas.

December 03, 2009 | TIME

Creating New Land for Climate Refugees in Bangladesh

Anna-Katarina Gravgaard and William Wheeler

Muhammud Yusuf tends a muddy, two acre farm in southeast Bangladesh. He's been here for six years, but a few decades ago, this land did not exist. It was underwater. This land area was created by silt that floats down rivers from the Himalayan mountains. Journalists William Wheeler and Anna Katarina-Gravgaard investigate this new land, and the impact it is having on climate refugees in the region.

November 30, 2009 | The Caravan

Climate on the Edge

William Wheeler and Anna-Katarina Gravgaard

The climate story of South Asia begins in the Himalayas, home to thousands of rain-fed glaciers that make up the largest body of ice outside the poles. In the winter, these glaciers capture the precipitation that makes it over the mountains. In the warmer months, they melt away water that feeds major rivers like the Ganga, the Indus, and the Brahmaputra. The system is a 'natural water tanker' for the 1.5 billion people living in the river basins below.The second important feature of the story is its extreme monsoon, in which half the rain for the season falls in only 15 days.

March 26, 2010 | News Points

Water and Peace: Security's Undercurrent

Summer Marion, for the Pulitzer Center

Specialists from across sectors gathered at the National Geographic Society on World Water Day, Monday, March 22, to share information on an issue seemingly so simple we often take it for granted.

But you don't have to be an expert to know about water.

Just ask the man who sold me my coffee today. "Well, that's obvious," he said of the event, "it doesn't matter what else people have; without water, they're going to go after each other to get it."

March 22, 2010 | News Points

On Water, a Call to Action

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged Monday to put water issues on the "front burner" of U.S. foreign policy. She told an audience of specialists and water advocates gathered at the National Geographic Society that solving the global challenge of safe water and sanitation was integral to every other U.S. interest.