This section explores the nuances of global water challenges, featuring insights by our researchers, collaborative pieces with our partners, and Q&A styled dialogues with industry experts. It complements our work by providing context, commentary, and a deeper understanding of our research findings.
Participatory Action Research
Participating in the decisions and activities of carrying out research can have a profound impact of empowering community members without previous training to understand, find solutions to, and communicate the challenges they face.
Multiple-Use Water Services
Recognizing that water is used for different purposes, Multiple Use Water Services (MUS) has emerged as one of the best ways to maximize water use.
Mobile Phone Solutions for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH)
Rapidly growing populations, decreasing water availability, and more erratic precipitation due to climate change are causing a crisis among the urban poor: millions of city dwellers in developing countries don’t have access to regular, reliable, safe, or affordable water and sanitation. The urban poor are willing to pay for water and sanitation services, and often are paying many times more for water from private sources.
Green Jobs and Water
The transition toward more sustainable approaches to managing, delivering, and treating freshwater involves workers in many different sectors of the economy and shifts in markets, occupations, and jobs created.
Freight Transport Justice
Freight transport, or the movement of products and raw materials via truck, train, ship or plane, is a major source of unhealthy diesel pollution and other adverse impacts that disproportionately affect low-income communities, communities of color, and workers.
Corporate Water Disclosure
Corporate water disclosure – the act of collecting data on the current state of a company’s water management, assessing the implications of this information for the business, developing a strategic response, and ultimately reporting this information to stakeholders (investors, NGOs, consumers, communities, suppliers, employees, and others) – is a critical component of a company’s water management efforts and water-related sustainability more generally.
Corporate Water Assessment
Companies’ ability to measure and understand their water use and corollary risks and impacts is key to effectively mitigating specific water problems and becoming responsible water stewards.
Conflicts Over Water
There are complex and real links between water and conflict. While water resources have rarely been the sole source of violent conflict or war, there is a long history of tensions and violence over access to water resources, attacks on water systems, and the use of water systems as weapons during war.
Community Resilience to Climate Change
Those who have historically contributed the least to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions warming our planet often stand to be most affected by the localized adverse impacts that these will have on community health and quality of life. These localized impacts, ranging from extreme heat to rising sea levels, will disproportionately affect vulnerable populations such as the elderly, renters, low-income residents, those with pre-existing medical conditions, and those without health or home insurance.
Community Mapping Initiative
Maps are powerful tools for analyzing and communicating how environmental hazards and resources are distributed in a given place.