Barcelona was supposed to bring hints of what's to come in December at the United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen. A world seeking sanity.

Of course the stories would be rich, the perplexities deep. Keith Schneider, our colleague and

Desalination is held in great promise for a thirsty world where more than a billion people don't have adequate access to clean water and where California, Georgia and the American Southwest face revolving water-supply emergencies. As we've reported before at Circle of Blue, the...

By J. Carl Ganter from Circle of Blue

NEW YORK, September 28, 2009 — Ever so steadily the basic factors that make up the global freshwater crisis — pollution, disease, scarcity, and access — are making their way to the top of the list of international priorities. More...

Colleague Peter Gleick pens sage words on water, policy and science, and few have similarly sharp eyes that spot anomalies in data, mal- or misfeasance in reporting or the ability to see through the muck and call out things that are just plain wrong.

Gleick, whose commentary we feature at...

As the world turns its eyes toward Copenhagen for the United Nations Climate Conference in December and how to engage the public on these massively complex issues of planetary survival, it might look to water as a universal solvent. According...

"With all the power of 21st century collaboration technology, nothing to date has tamed the massive amounts of disparate water information locked away in diverse database systems," reports Aubrey Parker, our colleague at Circle of Blue in her article, "Google Brings Water Data to Life."

Google's new

Did you know that Sun and Google headquarters may be below sea level?

California published today its comprehensive risk assessment of coastline vulnerabilities to rising sea levels caused by climate change. It paints a tough future that will require extensive adaptation, from Los Angeles to Silicon Valley. The state is...

Sometimes a story is just so big it needs superlatives. A story as big as a continent.

Take Australia's water, what's left of it.

"Not since the American Dust Bowl of the early 20th century has an industrialized nation sustained more damage from drought and water scarcity in its prime...

As the world launches stimulus plans and energy initiatives, there's a new way to save, as it turns out, lots of oil: cut back on bottled water.

In the first peer-reviewed study of its kind, researchers at the Pacific Institute found that in 2007 alone bottled water in the...

BBC presenter Nik Gowing moderates the closing session of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Summit in Dubai November 9. Photo by Dana Smillie/WEF

DUBAI -- It's no...

TIANJIN, China - If the world seeks solace and stability for investors, it need only turn to the economic development zone in this city of 11 million, at least if we can believe the slogans on streets and brochures. The zone, TEDA, calls itself the "blessed land," an "eternal...

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. -- By strange turn of fate or my wife's careful selection, almost every film we saw this summer at the Traverse City Film Festival had an overt or subtle water theme. And they were surprisingly captivating.

Festival host and co-founder Michael Moore is ubiquitous in his...

Dr. Geoff D. Dabelko is director of the Environmental Change and Security Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. Dabelko discusses water, conflict and peacemaking in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Click below to play the audio file of this interview.

Over at Circle of Blue WaterNews, we're reporting today on another ingredient to consider in the context of the China-Tibet conflict. Keith Schneider and C.T. Pope write that the Tibetan Plateau's vast reserves of glacial freshwater, which supply Asia's most populous regions, are both at risk and are emerging...

When I mentioned to author Jerry Dennis our coverage of the Tibetan Plateau's water challenges, he responded quickly, feeling a deep, personal connection. Many of the Tibetan region's lakes are considered sacred and, to Dennis, they parallel the Great Lakes. Dennis is the author of ten books about nature...

On the Tibetan Plateau, where a whim of nature created the highest points on Earth, many of the world's major rivers are born. Each day their flows bring life to more than a billion people downstream in Asia, the planet's most populous region.

As we watch the headlines in an...

ASPEN - Are we in an endgame struggle for survival or do we face the greatest opportunities in the history of civilization?

Both.

Granted, the messages remain grim, perhaps even darker than I had expected here under the blue skies at the Aspen...

On March 22 we observed another World Water Day, and this week we marked the fifth anniversary of the military conflict in Iraq. Water and war are bound together by more than the coincidence of time -- they are related by blood. Drought and Deluge are the weary parents...

Margaret Catley-Carlson is chairperson of Global Water Partnership, a working partnership among formed in 1996 by the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program and...

John Elkington, founder and chief entrepreneur of SustainAbility, the London-based think tank, and co-author, The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets that Change the World. Elkington puts water into the...