Water

India and China need to strike up a dialogue on common problems such as air and water pollution, CEF Director, Jennifer Turner said at an a seminar on 'Global Choke Point: Water-Energy-Food Confrontations in China, US and India' organized by the Indian Chamber of Commerce, ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the neighboring country.

Is China's pollution crisis affecting its chances of winning the Winter Olympics bid?

CEF Director, Dr. Jennifer Turner was recently quoted in a Vice Sports article addressing the nexus between sports, water scarcity, and pollution. As global temperatures continue to rise, finding an appropriate location for the winter olympics will become increasingly hard. At the same time, allocating huge amounts of natural resources such as water towards the games is becoming increasingly controversial.

Our short film "Broken Landscape" has been selected as an Editor's Pick over at The Atlantic. The film examines how a dangerous type of coal mining called "rat hole mining" has impacted communities and the environment in Northeastern India. The mines fuel the country's growing demand for energy, but pollute water supplies for downstream communities. Sean Peoples and Michael Miller - the film's co-producer and producer/director - were in the country when a national tribunal banned rat hole mining, sending reverberations throughout the region.

Saudi Arabia is maintaining its air offensive in Yemen, and Houthi rebels continue to stage assaults. A humanitarian crisis appears imminent.

But another crisis is raging in Yemen that could pose an existential threat to one of the world’s most troubled nations.

Policy wonks and academics produce voluminous tomes on sustainability issues, but how to get these before a larger audience? One wonkish think tank hard at work on this problem, the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center, is producing a series of short films to tell the stories that move these concerns toward a wider audience. The idea is to take complex, interacting factors and show how they affect real people.

Across the planet, two fundamental human needs --- energy and water --- often find themselves on a collision course. A new documentary looks at one such choke point in India, where coal mining and its negative environmental impact on water is the source of a regulatory battle with significant implications. We spoke with the filmmaker to learn more about this complex clash of needs. That’s the focus of this edition of  Wilson Center NOW.