Explore Challenges
- Natural disasters: how can we improve? [25 May 2010]
- Not In My Back Yard
- Digital Divide in the UK?
- Importing goods, exporting drought?
- The challenges and opportunities of an ageing society
- Engineering our climate
- The future shape of Capitalism
- Migration: skills and the job market
- Razing the Rainforest
- London under water
- Concreting the countryside
- Future of low carbon energy
- Africa in the 21st Century
digital inclusion, Kofi Annan, IT, climate change, War, drought, waste, India, rainforest, pensions, Prince Charles, 21st Century, virtual water, Economic Growth, China, South East England, Flood risk, geoengineering, Obama, credit crunch
Importing goods, exporting drought? : In the News
People may have to go vegetarian to save planet says Lord Stern
- Source: The Guardian
27th October 2009
Meat wastes water, creates greenhouse gases and could become as socially unacceptable as drink-driving
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the water footprint of bio energy
- Source: PNAS
- 3rd September 2009
A new Dutch study has assessed the water requirements of 13 bioenergy crops across the world.
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Will there be a ‘perfect storm’ in 2030?
- Source: BBC News
- 24th August 2009
As the world's population grows, competition for food, water and energy will increase. Food prices will rise, more people will go hungry, and migrants will flee the worst-affected regions.
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Water reform is ‘needed in Asia’
- Source: BBC News
- 18th August 2009
Asia must reform its water use to feed 1.5 billion extra people by 2050, says a new report. The authors warn that without big changes to irrigation many nations will have to import food.
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Water policies suffer sinking feeling
- Source: BBC News
- 18th August 2009
Rising populations, improving lifestyles and changes to the global climate are all increasing the pressure on the planet's water resources. Conservation expert Brian Richter explains why there is an urgent need for the world to embrace new ways in which it uses water.
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Britain should grow more crops to avoid global food crisis, say MPs
- Source: The Guardian
- 21st July 2009
Britain must not bury its head in the sand over food supplies, warns the environment, food and rural affairs committee
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Extent of agricultural land-grab revealed on new website
- Source: The Ecologist
- 22nd June 2009
With rich, resource-poor nations increasingly outsourcing their food production to less developed nations, a new website aims to expose the extent of the agricultural land-grab epidemic. South Korea’s biggest is 1.3 million hectares in Madagascar. China’s is 1.24 million in the Philippines. Qatar’s most problematic is 40,000 hectares in Kenya. We’re talking breadbaskets, parcels of land bought in poorer countries where food is grown to feed foreign markets.
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As Iraq runs dry, a plague of snakes is unleashed
- Source: The Independent
- 15th June 2009
The rivers that made Iraq's dry soil so fertile are drying up because the supply of water, which once flowed south into Iraq from Turkey, Syria and Iran, is now held back by dams and used for irrigation. On the Euphrates alone, Turkey has five large dams upriver from Iraq, and Syria has two.
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