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Water Scarcity and Climate Change: Growing Risks for Businesses and Investors

Climate change threatens to undermine the basic functioning of societies around the globe, and large multinational companies are not immune to these risks.

Op-Ed: Peripheral Canal Idea Still Thin on Details

The governor's Delta Vision Committee recently announced its recommendations for addressing the decades-old challenges facing California's water system...

Let’s Start Overcoming Obstacles: Agricultural Water Conservation and Efficiency

The Pacific Institute released a report several months ago on the potential for greater agricultural water conservation and efficiency in areas that depend on water either flowing into or being exported out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Each of the four scenarios we analyzed offers the potential to reduce agricultural water withdrawals in the region by 5 to 13 percent.

Water and Climate Change: Managing Unavoidable Impacts – Avoiding Unmanageable Impacts

On January 9, 2009, Dr. Peter H. Gleick, addressed legislators and staff from the House of Representatives and the Senate on “Climate Change: Intersections of Science and Policy” in two briefings sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Water Climate Change Brief

Water and Climate Change: Managing Unavoidable Impacts; Avoiding Unmanageable Impacts. Dr Peter Gleick...

The World’s Water, Volume 6

Pacific Institute President and series editor Peter Gleick, with Institute coauthors Heather Cooley, Michael Cohen, Mari Morikawa, Jason Morrison, and Meena Palaniappan addresses the ever-more-pressing issues of our use and misuse of the world’s freshwater resources.

National Water Priorities Budget

Following up on the “Water: Threats and Opportunities – Recommendations to the Next President” released in October 2008, the Pacific Institute offers a set of priority budget suggestions...

Peak Water

To judge from recent media attention, the finite supply of freshwater on Earth has been nearly tapped dry, leading to a natural resource calamity on par with, or even worse than, running out of accessible, affordable oil...

EPA Drinking Water Preliminary Regulatory Determination on Perchlorate

The Pacific Institute would like to formally submit the following comments on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Drinking Water Preliminary Regulatory Determination on Perchlorate...

Time to Tap into Water-Wise Farmers’ Well of Ideas

Water supply constraints have reduced the amount of water available for California this year, causing economic losses and midseason fallowing for many farmers. Independent of what we might want, it is very likely that there will continue to be serious constraints on water available to all California users, including agriculture.

Water: Threats and Opportunities: Recommendations for the Next President

Safe and adequate fresh water resources are central to the economy, foreign policy, and security of the United States.

CEO Water Mandate: Transparency Framework Phase One

Transparency has been identified by endorsing companies and external stakeholders alike as a key issue in making the CEO Water Mandate a legitimate, meaningful initiative that advances best practice in sustainable water management in the private sector.

California Colloquium on Water

Op-Ed: Water for Food

As California politicians continue to argue over developing comprehensive solutions to the state's water problems, eyes are inevitably turning to the agricultural sector, which uses 80 percent of the water consumed by Californians.

More with Less: Agricultural Water Conservation and Efficiency in California – A Special Focus on the Delta

California farmers can grow more food and fiber with less water, according to the Pacific Institute report, More with Less: Agricultural Water Conservation and Efficiency in California – A Special Focus on the Delta.

Op-Ed: California Can Grow More Food AND Take Less Water from the Delta

We can do more with less. Nations in drier climates around the world and forward-thinking farmers in California already are using less water to grow more crops - with greater profits. It is time for California.

CEO Water Mandate 2nd Working Conference

Recognizing the urgency with respect to addressing the emerging global water crisis, the UN Secretary-General, in partnership with a number of international business leaders, launched in July 2007 a new initiative – The CEO Water Mandate.

Op-Ed: Save the Salton Sea

This op-ed essay was written by Michael Cohen of the Pacific Institute for the Riverside Press-Enterprise to address the public health and ecological crisis developing around California's Salton Sea.

Extreme Weather Events as a Result of Climatic Change

My testimony today addresses the rising risk of extreme weather-related events as a result of climatic changes and their impact on water resources, with a focus on the western United States. In the short time available, let me provide a summary overview.

Op-Ed: State Needs Innovative, Aggressive Water Solutions

For more than a decade, California has had relatively adequate winter rains and mostly full reservoirs. No longer. We had the opportunity to fix many of our water problems while the state had more abundant water, but that chance has been squandered. And though we’ve never been very good at making rational water decisions in a crisis, the time to change that is clearly and urgently here.

Integrity of Science: Driving vs. Walking: Cows, Climate Change, and Choice

Is walking worse for the planet than driving? This startling claim has been published in high-profile media outlets, including the New York Times blogs.

Hummer vs. Prius Redux: Prius (Still) Leaves Hummer in the DustNew Data Affirms Prius More Energy Efficient

A year after a faulty marketing report fueled an automotive face-off, the Pacific Institute, armed with newly released Consumer Reports’ data, returns to the Hummer versus Prius debate and finds the Prius is (still) more energy efficient over its lifetime than the Hummer.

Bioenergy and Greenhouse Gases

Bioenergy is part of the solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

A Review of Decision-Making Support Tools in the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Sector

As of 2008, more than a billion people lack safe water and 2.6 billion lacked access to sanitation worldwide.

Desalination, With a Grain of Salt

Long considered the Holy Grail of water supply, desalination offers the potential of an unlimited source of fresh water purified from the vast oceans of salt water that surround us. The public, politicians, and water managers continue to hope that cost-effective and environmentally safe ocean desalination will come to the rescue of water-short regions.