Today: Africa, BottledWater, DRCongo, France, Israel, IvoryCoast, Laos, Palestine, Plastics, Russia, Spain, UK, WaterConflicts, WaterCrisis
Every day the most important news on water and sanitation from around the world, compiled by the Blue Community Network, defending water as a common, public good and a human right.
Gaza: Children fetching water killed in Israeli strike, emergency officials say
Ten people, including six children, have been killed in an Israeli air strike while waiting to fill water containers in central Gaza on Sunday, emergency service officials say.
Their bodies were sent to Nuseirat’s al-Awda Hospital, which also treated 16 injured people including seven children, a doctor there said.
Eyewitnesses said a drone fired a missile at a crowd queuing with empty jerry cans next to a water tanker in al-Nuseirat refugee camp.
Spain: Galician court condemns regional government for inaction on reservoir pollution
In a historic ruling, the Galician regional government and the Miño-Sil Hydrographic Confederation were condemned for failing to control the Galician region most saturated with nitrates from slurry spills, and for failing to take action.
After more than ten years of continuous complaints and legal proceedings, residents and environmentalists from a small town in Ourense are celebrating this landmark decision. The High Court of Justice of Galicia found the regional government and the Miño-Sil Hydrographic Confederation guilty of “inaction” in the face of “environmental degradation” and high pollution levels in the As Conchas reservoir, caused by the activities of nearby large-scale farms.
The last glaciers in East Africa are doomed to disappear.
The tropical glaciers of East Africa, which are mainly located on Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya and in the Rwenzori Mountains, are melting as a result of global warming. What will this mean for local populations?
Africa is known for its rainforests, savannahs and deserts. These ecosystems cover most of the continent. However, it also has regions that are permanently covered by ice.
Covering Water Scarcity
Explore how climate change has worsened access to drinkable water across the world.
Despite water covering over 70% of Earth, less than 1% of it is drinkable — with climate change dangerously threatening this limited supply of freshwater. More frequent droughts, warming temperatures creating a “thirstier atmosphere,” erratic precipitation patterns, and saltwater contamination of drinking water driven by sea-level rise have worsened water scarcity across the world.
Long-term lack of water supply outraged residents of Makhachkala
There has been no water supply to the homes of Makhachkala residents for several days now, people are forced to buy bottled water, and appeals to the authorities have not yielded results. Officials explained the interruption in the water supply by repair work.
As “Kavkazsky Uzel” wrote, in July 2024, Makhachkala residents complained about long interruptions in the water supply and demanded that the city authorities fix the problems.
Ivory Coast: Access to drinking water in Bondoukou. MP Maizan Koffi Noël unveils a major project involving 35 boreholes
During a press briefing held in the city of a thousand mosques, Bondoukou MP Maizan Koffi Noël gave an update on the development projects currently underway in his department. The focus was on progress in priority sectors such as education, health, electrification, rural roads, and above all, access to drinking water.
The target: an ambitious programme of 35 water wells designed to relieve rural populations, who often face serious difficulties in accessing drinking water.
LinfoDrome (French) / IvoryCoast
DR Congo: Power cuts and water shortages are threatening the safety and hygiene of Matadi Central Prison.
The prison, which is also known as Camp Molayi, is facing a double infrastructure crisis: frequent power cuts and a shortage of drinking water. Its director, Joseph Bikoko, considers the situation worrying and warns of the risks of escape and the deterioration of prison conditions.
Matadi Central Prison is supplied with electricity from the Camp Molayi network, but suffers frequent power cuts between 4 p.m. and 10 p.m.
Is Corporate Sustainability Used to Avoid Accountability for the Sachet Problem?
At the center of this crisis are multinational corporations that have built their business models around disposable packaging while promoting corporate sustainability pledges that sound bold but rarely deliver.
Sachets may be small in size, but the collective impact of these single-use plastic packets has brought about a global crisis that now endangers the future of our planet. Every year, billions of sachets end up polluting the streets, waterways, and communities, especially in countries across the Global South.
UK: Severn Trent boss paid £3.2m despite rise in sewage spills
Liv Garfield receives bumper pay package as performance failings plague water company.
The boss of Severn Trent took home a pay package of £3.3m in salary and bonuses last year despite overseeing a jump in sewage spills and customer complaints.
Liv Garfield was awarded a basic salary of £830,000, plus a further £2.3m in bonuses and benefits. Her annual bonus of £830,000 was a 42pc increase on the previous year.
France: Volvic accused of drying up rivers to fill its bottles
Our Tour de France of struggles stops off in Puy-de-Dôme, where local associations have accused the company of depleting natural resources in order to fill its bottles. They are challenging the prefectural decree that regulates water extraction.
“If there were any fish, their dorsal fins would be sticking out of the water.” Christian Amblard could not have found a more eloquent way to describe the critical state of the stream, which is dying, like many others, a stone’s throw from his home. The water level has fallen so low over the last twenty years that the area’s biodiversity has gradually disappeared, unable to survive. For Christian Amblard, an honorary CNRS research director specialising in hydrobiology, the cause of the water shortage seems clear: the Volvic water company’s factory, operating at full capacity, is located just 4 km away.
Laos: Vientiane to raise tap water prices amid cost surge
Vientiane authorities will raise tap water prices in stages from 2025 to 2027 to reflect rising production costs and help its water supply enterprise recover from years of financial losses.
The Vientiane People’s Council approved the price hike during its 9th Ordinary Session, after hearing that current prices, unchanged since 2014, are no longer sustainable.
Head of the Vientiane Department of Public Works and Transport, Bounyavath Nilaxay, representing the board of directors of the Vientiane Water Supply Enterprise, said the price rise is essential to offset growing operational costs and keep services running.
Water Wars: Why South Asia and Africa must act before rivers become frontlines
That oft-quoted prediction of former World Bank vice president Dr. Ismail Serageldin in 1995 is no longer a distant warning. It is a reality rapidly taking shape before our eyes particularly in South Asia and Africa, two of the most water-stressed and geopolitically fragile regions in the world.
While leaders continue to treat water disputes as peripheral an environmental or technical challenge to be solved by engineers and bureaucrats the truth is far starker: water scarcity is a geopolitical crisis in the making, and if not addressed with urgency, it could ignite some of the most dangerous conflicts of our time.
