As the world’s climate patterns continue to shift unpredictably, places where drinking water was once abundant may soon find reservoirs dry and groundwater aquifers depleted. South Africa too remains in the grip of its worst drought in decades. In January 2016, the South African Weather Service announced that 2015 was the driest year on record and it shows no sign of abating. Those records date back to 1904. In the TED Talk link below, civil and environmental engineer David Sedlak shares four practical solutions to the ongoing urban water crisis. His goal: to shift our water supply towards new, local sources of water and create a system that is capable of withstanding any of the challenges climate change may throw at us in the coming years. Watch the 14 minute TED Talk here (4 ways we can avoid a catastrophic drought)
How can we make crops survive without water?
As the world’s population grows and the effects of climate change come into sharper relief, we’ll have to feed more people using less arable land. Molecular biologist Jill Farrant studies a rare phenomenon that may help: “resurrection plants” — super-resilient plants that seemingly come back from the dead. Could they hold promise for growing food in our coming hotter, drier world? Watch the 14 minute TED Talk here (How we can make crops survive without water)
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