When most people think of water issues, the first thing that comes to mind is falling reservoirs and water rationing at the tap. While this is a very significant impact, our business sustainability consulting is reminded that water stretches much further and deep in to the heart of business. The reality is that water is linked to every facet of life on our planet and directly interacts (more…)

A pair of gravity-measuring NASA satellites has documented a precipitous drop in freshwater supplies in the arid Middle East over the past decade. NASA said that since 2003 parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran had lost 144 cubic kilometers of total stored freshwater, an amount roughly equivalent to the water in the Dead Sea. (more…)

There have been devastating droughts in the past few years in places like Africa, Australia, and the United States. Last summer, the drought in the central US caused the loss of massive crops, causing a major economic hit for the country. The seemingly increasing prevalence of droughts has some announcing the effects of climate change coming to fruition. However, (more…)

This year has been an unusually severe one for wildfires in the U.S., with more than 9.1 million acres of land burned through the end of November, federal officials say.

The total affected area, which is depicted in a new NASA map, is already the third-largest since records were first kept in 1960, and will likely break previous (more…)

The U.S. and Mexico have reached an agreement on how to share water from the Colorado River, a five-year deal crafted to help both nations prepare for future droughts.

Under the agreement, regional water agencies in California, Arizona, and Nevada will purchase nearly 100,000 acre-feet of water from Mexico’s (more…)

A pair of NASA satellite images comparing water flow along the Mississippi River this month with August 2011 illustrates the effects of a severe summer drought along the critical waterway. The recent photo, taken just south of Memphis, Tennessee on Aug. 8, reveals extensive sandbars that are newly exposed or far larger than they were a year ago. (more…)

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) just issued a troubling little news flash today …

July 2012 was hottest month on record for contiguous U.S. since record keeping began in 1895.

There are still quite a few people that don’t want to admit that human beings are altering the planet’s (more…)

U.S. meat, poultry, and dairy producers are urging the Obama administration to suspend a quota for corn-based ethanol production, warning that the renewable fuels standard could trigger a food crisis as a prolonged drought pushes corn and soybean prices to record levels. (more…)

For its July magazine issue, Texas Monthly took an in-depth look at the diminishing Texas water supply. The detailed cover story jumps right to the heart of the matter in the first paragraph: “As last year’s historic drought reminded us, Texas has always lived life by the drop, just a few dry years away from a serious crisis. With our population expected to nearly double (more…)

Recently, the U.N.’s official climate change body announced that extreme weather events are tied to climate change and we can expect even more mayhem as the century wears on. Among other climate disasters, the authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report foresee more scorching days and (more…)