Water Crisis

The world is in the opening phases of a global water crisis. As I contend in my book How the World Ends, climate change is part of the global water crisis story, but it is not the whole story. This is a manmade crisis that could be fixed.

More than 70% of the earth is covered with water. The driving issue of the global water crisis is not supply. The issue is distribution.

In many parts of the world, the waters are rising and cities are sinking. In other parts of the world, alarms are sounding as wells and critical water infrastructure runs dry. A cooperative global order could solve this problem but leadership, real leadership and not political grandstanding, is necessary.

This collection of articles tracks the development of this crisis. It is not happening in a vacuum. Water crises trigger refugees, political crises, and more.

Politics

You Should Know About the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)

JB Shreve - September 20, 2021

Crises are beginning to accumulate in Ethiopia. It is only a matter of time before one explodes in a significant regional and perhaps global catastrophe. While prior posts have looked at the country's growing threat of civil war, a...

Politics

Middle East Water Crisis

JB Shreve - September 14, 2021

When most people think of the Middle East, they imagine sand dunes and rolling deserts. While that is true of a nation like Saudi Arabia, it is not an accurate image for the broader Middle East. The great rivers...

Society

America’s Inevitable Water Crisis – Happening Now

JB Shreve - September 6, 2021

Increasingly the world is waking up to the global water crisis. That US has not escaped that wake-up call. A growing American water crisis is pounding the western US and parts of Hawaii. This year has witnessed a continued string...

Politics

Water Protests in Iran, And the Shape of Things to Come

JB Shreve - July 28, 2021

In my 2019 book How the World Ends, I laid out three central crises: food, water, and population, that would serve as the foundation for a convergence of crises and chaos over the next half-century. The repercussions of these crises...

Society

Massive Dust Storm Hits Beijing – But That’s Only Half the Story

JB Shreve - March 19, 2021

A massive dust cloud covered Beijing, China, earlier this week. Multiple commentators noted the “apocalyptic” feel that the images provoked. This event was not an end of the world movie, though, and it also is not as new or unprecedented...

Politics

Water Bets – Investing In Water Scarcity

JB Shreve - December 15, 2020

In my book How the World Ends – Understanding the Growing Chaos, I traced the source of growing unrest and crisis across the world to three root causes – food distribution, water scarcity, and population distribution. In the final...

Politics

The Other Global Water Crisis

JB Shreve - October 16, 2019

This is part of my ongoing series on the Global Water Crisis which we have been tracking here at JB Shreve & the End of History We have looked at the places in the world where the water is running...

Politics

Water Crisis in the Sahel

JB Shreve - September 25, 2019

This post on the water crisis in the Sahel is part of my ongoing blog series on the global water crisis. In my last post for this series looking at the global water crisis, we looked at the growing...

Politics

Water Wars and the Global Water Crisis

JB Shreve - September 20, 2019

This post on water wars is part of an ongoing series where we are tracking the global water crisis. In 2012 Adel Darwish, author of the book Water Wars: Coming Conflicts in the Middle East, predicted the next water war...

Politics