Stockholm Water Front No 2 2015

With several of the stories in this issue, we ask you to change your perspective and view the world from a new angle. We have interviewed Rajendra Singh, the 2015 Stockholm Water Prize laureate, who brought water, and life, back to Rajasthan, one of the poorest, driest parts of India. Not by using advanced, new technology, but by reviving ancient Indian knowledge about water harvesting and conservation. Now, he is sought by Western governments to advise them on flood prevention and management. The Water Man, on page 8.

In California, home of the most advanced technology firms in the world, people are experiencing the worst drought in a millennium. Technology cannot (not yet, anyhow) make it rain. Lack of water, our most precious resource, has caused relations between competing water users to deteriorate to new lows. But the writer of this issue’s Last Word, James Workman, is an optimist nevertheless. The end of water as we know it, on page 14.

In the cover story, we read about the need for further cooperation to save the Baltic Sea, one of the world’s dirtiest seas in one of the world’s most developed regions. Coming together in Kaliningrad, on page 5.

And in our analysis, Anton Earle draws Aristotle into his reasoning about Africa, the continent’s water challenges, and where the solutions are likely to come from. Africa: Growing thirstier, on page 10.

Enjoy the read!