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The Mirage of Development: Gwadar’s Water Wars

A view of the Gwadar port of Pakistan Photo: VCG While the rest of Pakistan’s major cities were drenched in monsoon rains, a group of children stood hand in hand and chorused this in unison in Gwadar’s New Tobagh Ward near Koh-a-Bun Ward: “Pani Dho, bijli dho, warna Kursi Chor Dho.” ( Give us water, […]
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Where’s the Water?
“Whiskey’s for drinking and water’s for fighting,” a popular adage from the chronicles of the American West that’s starting to come back into vogue. The world’s megacities are on a knife’s edge of water stress. Climate change is clobbering water resources and testing the nerves of the world, especially megacities; e.g., Mexico City (pop. 22 […]
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Thousands Have Lived without Love, but Not One without Water
Diego Rivera (Mexico), El Agua, Origen de la Vida (‘Water, Origin of Life’), 1951. By November 2023, it was already clear that the Israeli government had begun to deny Palestinians in Gaza access to water. ‘Every hour that passes with Israel preventing the provision of safe drinking water in the Gaza strip, in brazen breach […]
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Democratic Socialism Will Prevent the Catastrophes
Capitalism gathered resources — land, labor, and capital to start an industrial revolution that brought prosperity and elevated standards of living to much of the earth’s inhabitants. Once in motion, it generated additional capital that gathered more labor and more resources in a perpetual cycle of increased production that constantly benefitted populations. The achievements did […]
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Aqueous Matters: Europe’s Water Crisis
Europe is joining a number of other regions on the planet in suffering a prolonged water crisis; and it is one that shows little sign of abating. To this can be added the near catastrophic conditions that exist in other parts of the globe, where ready and secure access to water supplies is more aspiration […]