Sustainable Water Management (SWM) Program – Tufts University

About | Faculty | Students | Curriculum

* * * * * * *

SWM-2022 – Guest Session

Tim Weiskel
1 February 2022

and:

as well as:

See related discussion of global sea level change:

2022 SEA LEVEL RISE TECHNICAL REPORT
UPDATED PROJECTIONS AVAILABLE THROUGH 2150 FOR ALL U.S. COASTAL WATERS.

and:

• Global and Regional Sea Level Rise Scenarios for the United States
• Web Directory to 2022 Sea Level Rise Technical Report

* * * *

Some Follow-up Topics & Related Resources from
Transition Studies in Response to Student
Questions & Class Discussion

See particularly:

U.N. Warns of Water Wars as 2 Billion People Lack Clean Water with Africa & Middle East Hardest Hit

Democracy Now! Mar 27, 2023 Latest Shows
A new report by the United Nations warns that a quarter of humanity lacks access to safe drinking water, and nearly half of the global population has no access to basic sanitation. Unless action is taken, 60% of the world’s population could face water supply issues by 2050. At the U.N. Water Conference in New York last week, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres addressed the report’s findings and warned of the potential link between water scarcity and war. From Abuja, Nigeria, we speak to Boluwaji Onabolu, president of the Network of Female Professionals in WASH in Nigeria, which focuses on water, sanitation, hygiene and public health. We’re also joined from Phoenix, Arizona, by Mohammed Mahmoud, the director of the Climate and Water Program at the Middle East Institute.

And related:

• BBC World Service – Newshour, UN issues dire warning over water
• The fight for water | DW Documentary
• U.N. Warns of Water Wars as 2 Billion People Lack Clean Water with Africa & Middle East Hardest Hit
• Global Climate Change & Africa
• Global Climate Change & Africa: An Integrative Research & Information Platform

For the implications of the emerging water crisis for agriculture in Africa and the so called “green revolution” around the world see:

• Global Balliol
• The “Green Revolution:” Its Essence, Achievements & Aftermath
• The Law & The Profits vs. Natural Law & The Prophet: Herman Daly & the Future of the Human Prospect
• “No Soil. No Growing Seasons. Just Add Water and Technology:” The Recent Evolution & Tragic Trajectory of the World Food System
• “The Truth about the Green Revolution,” contribution to GTI Forum “Technology and the Future,” Great Transition Initiative (February 2022).
• BBC World Service – The Climate Question, Can we feed the world without using chemical fertilisers?
• USA: climate change threat to food
• Billionaire Hydroponics, Expanding World Hunger & The Tragic Future Trajectory of Global Food System
• Ignorance, Arrogance, Overshoot & Collapse: The Destructive Power of Enduing Myths In Collapsing Civilizations
  and
• Overcoming the Multiple Legacies of European Colonialism: Can The West Survive Its Most Cherished Historical Myths? 
• Misplaced Metaphors in the Anthropocene: Beware of the Devastating Power of Cultural Clichés & Misconstrued Metaphors on a Small Planet
• The Vulnerability of the Global Food System and the Strategies Needed for a Sustainable “Recovery”
• The Malthus Insight and the Global Limits of “Green Revolution” Food Production
• “If you do not change direction, you will most likely end up where you are headed.”
• The Fatal Consequences of a Misplaced Metaphor: Agriculture Industry and Infinite Growth
• Killing the Soil that Feeds Us: Food, Profit & the Fatal Impact of Petro-Dependent Agriculture
• The mistake of petro-intensive agriculture – the UNA “Global Engagement Summit”

* * * *

Some further background on what brought me to focus upon human-land/water interactions over time….

==============================================

Beyond my current work on long-term human survival strategies amidst our global ecological and epidemiological crises, I have followed with great interest the initiative of Balliol College in Oxford in examining “Slavery in the Age of Revolutions.”  Inspired in part by an impressive exhibit of historical material in digital form at the Oxford college where I started my graduate work more than fifty years ago, I have convened an international group called the “Africa Map Circle” to expand international scholarship in African historical cartography. 

The point of this new digital humanities research and teaching initiative is to help African historians and anthropologist to learn more about the ecological and social legacy in Africa of the trans-Atlantic maritime trade as well as outlining meaningful change that is now required by way of reparations for these several centuries of systemic exploitation.

 Newly available technologies for digitizing rare and delicate documents combined with “Zoom” conferencing communications now make it possible to convene international conferences between experts on multiple continents to examine the relation between European, American and African history from multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural perspectives never previously possible. 

============================================

For further consideration of these themes see (forthcoming):

and
The Malthus Insight and the Global Limits of “Green Revolution” Food Production

* * *